Founded in 1993, growing across the Pacific
Castle Resorts & Hotels has specialised in innovative hotel and resort management since 1993. Over more than three decades, it has grown organically across the Hawaiian Islands and into New Zealand and Nevada, building a portfolio that combines full-service hotels with resort condominiums, townhomes, and villas. The headquarters in Honolulu coordinates a network of properties, each retaining its own character.
A vision to lead Pacific hospitality
Castle's stated vision is to be the leading hospitality management company in the Pacific, and the team works to that goal by tracking local and global trends and adapting quickly. Three principles guide the business: evolve, innovate, and adapt. As Matt Bailey, President and CEO, puts it: "It is through our innovation, flexibility, and commitment to personalised service that we have become one of the fastest growing hospitality management companies in the Pacific."
Why Castle came back to Maxxton
Castle's relationship with Maxxton started in 2014 on the Newyse platform. By 2022 to 2023, the team had run an RFP for a new property management system and signed with Track, a pure vacation rental product. After implementation began at one of Castle's vacation rental companies, the limits became clear: it would not work for the hotel space. Re-opening the conversation with Maxxton revealed how far the platform had evolved in a decade, and Maxxton's flexibility across all three of Castle's business models won the team back.
"I couldn't be happier with the way the relationship has evolved. Once we got our hands on those other systems, we realised what we had was better than anything we were looking at." Matt Bailey, President and CEO, Castle Resorts & Hotels
Challenges of running three business models at once
One PMS for hotels, condo-tels, and vacation rentals
Castle's business spans pure hotels, condo-tels, and vacation rentals, each with its own ownership structure, guest profile, and operational flow. Finding a single property management system that could handle all three was, as Matt Bailey puts it, "almost an impossible task because the business models are so different."
- Hotels, condo-tels, and vacation rentals on three different operational logics
- Owners, guests, and partners all expecting tailored flows
- Risk of fragmenting the tech stack across business lines
A legacy platform customised into a corner
Castle had been on Newyse since 2014 and the system had never been updated. Over time it had been so heavily customised to mirror existing internal processes that modernising it became difficult, and the workflows around it had calcified.
- Decade-old version of the platform, never updated
- Heavy customisation that mirrored old habits rather than improved them
- Modernisation blocked by accumulated bespoke configuration
Manual finance and owner-statement work
Behind the scenes, Castle was running a manual workaround for owner statements that pulled data out of Newyse into spreadsheets and reshaped it. It was time-consuming, error-prone, and built on top of three decades of accumulated habit.
- Data exported from the PMS into spreadsheets
- Manual reformatting before owner statements could be issued
- Workflows that everyone followed because "it's the way we'd done things for 30 years"
A brief detour through a different PMS
When Matt Bailey joined in 2023, Castle was already implementing Track, a pure vacation-rental product, following a full RFP. It worked for one part of the business but not the rest, creating uncertainty about which platform should anchor the group.
- Track suited vacation rentals but not hotels
- Mid-implementation pivot risk
- A live RFP that needed re-evaluation
How Maxxton supports Castle
A single platform across hotels, condo-tels, and vacation rentals
Maxxton's updated platform now handles bookings, check-ins, inventory, and reservations across all of Castle's business models within a single environment. While Track was only suited to vacation rentals and Newyse had been frozen in time, Maxxton adapts to each model based on the guest and the property. "Maxxton is the workhorse," says Matt Bailey. "It can adapt to the hotel model or the vacation rental model depending upon where the customer is coming from."
End-to-end flow, from inventory to owner statement
Maxxton can take Castle from the moment inventory is shown to a prospective guest all the way through to the financial statement, including the statements that go to condominium and vacation rental owners. That end-to-end coverage is what unlocks the back-of-house migration that Castle is currently working on, including the owner and finance modules. "Maxxton can take us from the point of presenting your inventory to a prospective guest all the way through to the financial statement. In particular with condominium owners, vacation rental owners, all the way to their statement," says Matt Bailey.
Revenue Management and Customer Care modules
Castle has signed on to implement Maxxton's Revenue Management and Customer Care features, both of which are AI-supported. The aim is to optimise pricing across all properties, automate guest communication via text and email, and manage service delivery consistently across departments without losing the personal touch that defines the brand.
A cross-functional user group and train-the-trainer rollout
To support the rollout, Castle built a stakeholder group spanning operations, finance, marketing, and revenue management, bringing them into training and testing early. On top of that, Castle developed subject-matter experts at the property level so that adoption could be carried out locally. "We create a subject matter expert in various disciplines and also at certain properties, so that they can train new employees," says Matt. "We have power users at properties whose representatives participate in the stakeholder meetings and are very familiar with how the system works."
Jira ticketing in place of a decade of Skype threads
With Maxxton's distribution tools, EuroResorts uses OTAs strategically to spread risk and reach new guests. After the pandemic, they "partnered with OTAs to bring in customers from different locations" to "complement our existing direct bookings and fill other markets when they have different booking dates and different price points as well." This reduced UK/Ireland reliance from 90% to a more balanced customer base. OTAs also extend reach into markets where EuroResorts lacks resources. "We've used it strategically so where we don't have the resource to target the French, German, or the Nordic markets," Rod said. Partners "provide the customer service leg of that, all the call centre and everything else and the language skills that come with that," delivering "a big, big boost" and "a really good option for us moving forward."
A relationship that reaches the people who set policy
What stood out for Castle was the access to senior Maxxton resources. The provider sent senior support people to Hawaii to work alongside the Castle team during the renewed implementation. "If we were working with Opera or Springer-Miller or some other major PMS system, we wouldn't be dealing with the people who make policy for the company. We'd be dealing with a salesperson several rungs down. And that makes a big difference," says Matt Bailey.
Results: a renewed partnership, a unified platform
Key takeaways
- Front-of-house operations have migrated to the updated Maxxton platform, with back-of-house modules following
- Manual finance and operations work is being eliminated as the owner and finance modules come online
- A modern interface and clearer training structure have improved staff buy-in
- Maxxton now powers all of Castle's condo-tel properties, with the rest of the portfolio under consideration
Manual, error-prone work cut from finance and operations
Manual export-and-reformat cycles around owner statements are being phased out as Castle moves the owner and finance modules onto Maxxton. The team's stated commitment is to use Maxxton to its full potential and eliminate any dispensable manual work. "We've made the commitment that we are going to get to the point where we use Maxxton to its utmost capabilities and eliminate any kind of manual work that can be eliminated," says Matt Bailey.
Staff prefer the modern interface
Reservations and front-desk staff prefer Maxxton's updated interface and usability over both the legacy Newyse setup and the other PMS Castle had briefly trialled. That preference matters because adoption drives the rest: it shortens onboarding, makes the train-the-trainer model effective, and protects the personal-service moments Castle cares about most.
A clear internal structure for training and adoption
The combination of a cross-functional stakeholder group at the centre and subject-matter experts at the property level has given Castle a repeatable adoption structure. New employees are trained locally by people who already know the system, and feedback loops back to the central group through Jira and regular discussion.
Maxxton powers all condo-tel properties, with more on the way
Maxxton now runs all of Castle's condo-tel properties and is under consideration for the rest of the portfolio. With the Revenue Management and Customer Care modules being added, plus housekeeping and maintenance being rolled out, Castle is layering more capability onto the platform rather than running parallel systems.
A partnership Castle did not expect to come back to
The headline result is harder to measure but consequential: a partnership Castle considered ending is now stronger than before. The team came back, evaluated alternatives in detail, and chose Maxxton again, which is its own kind of validation. Looking ahead, the team also sees the platform as a way to extend, not replace, Castle's personal-service culture. "We are increasingly using technology to create touchpoints with the guest. Maxxton provides opportunities to automate guest communication via text, via email," says Matt. "But if it gets to the point where do-it-yourself minimises or eliminates personal contact, that's not my customer."
Partners
Matt Bailey, President & CEO
Matt Bailey is a seasoned hospitality executive with more than 40 years of experience, primarily in four- and five-star properties. He combines strong communication skills, marketing instinct, and a deep grasp of financial reporting, with a track record of improving financial results, team morale, and customer satisfaction across the businesses he has led. His specialities include start-ups, turnaround situations, luxury resorts, condominium resorts, and fractional resort operations and management. He joined Castle Resorts & Hotels as President and CEO in 2023 and has led the group's renewed partnership with Maxxton.