A little fatherly advice was all Crystal Maggelet needed to jump head first into the hotel business.
Maggelet's father approached her in the fall of 1992 with the idea of developing a hotel. He would provide the financial backing for the project but turned over all other responsibilities to her.After having tried her hand at everything from being a sales representative to starting an advertising department, she decided to give it a shot. Maggelet's biggest challenge was to build and manage a hotel with no hotel experience other than traveling extensively for previous employers.
She felt that this experience would serve her well in developing a product that was suited to the needs of the traveling business person.
By spring 1993, Maggelet began putting all of her efforts into developing the Crystal Inn. She became a jack-of-all-trades: construction project manager, purchasing agent, interior designer, marketer, typist and finally hotel operator.
Another challenge Maggelet had to face was how she would position the Crystal Inn against national chains like Marriott and Holiday Inn. She knew it would be tough to do, since the Crystal Inn was an independant hotel and therefore unknown to her intended customers.
Maggelet designed the Crystal Inn with the cost-conscious business traveler in mind.
In 1994, Maggelet founded MacCall Management, along with her husband, Chuck. By January 1995, MacCall began managing non-Crystal Inn properties with seven highway lodging properties owned by Flying J, renaming the properties BestRest. This expanded their operations from California to Maryland.
Today, Maggelet manages 13 hotel properties, eight of which are Crystal Inns. Her plans are to continue to develop a strong regional chain and keep its options open to franchising.
MacCall will soon deploy a World Wide Web resevation system across all of its Crystal Inn properties. Maggelet said the growth of reservations on the Web have fostered an environment where MacCall can functionally compete with the large hotel franchises.