Last February 10, our colleague Nicolás Chavanes, Head of Sales and Partnership de Chekin, had the pleasure to have a very interesting chat with Martin Thor, Property Manager y Co-founder of Guestia. They talked about the value that Guestia has found in our Chekin tool after the integration of the two.
Martin Thor is a property manager of Guestia and he does everything that has to do with operations marketing. He also spends most of his time on international sales. He entered this sector purely by chance after leaving his previous job and two weeks later the lockdown came.
But before starting the interview, for those who do not know Guestia, is a Property Management company which is in charge of managing all aspects related to tourist accommodation, managing from the reserves, communication with guests, the prices and reviews, cleaning the house, the check-in y handing over the keys to the guests, so that the owner does not have to take care of anything.
Thanks to Chekin, Guestia has been able to improve many aspects of its business, thanks to the automation of processes that our tool has allowed them, such as the option to check in online, or to allow remote access, forgetting about the delivery of keys.
Digitising these processes has undoubtedly brought them great added value, which is why today they wanted to tell us in detail how Chekin has improved their processes and the benefits they have found:
- Where Guestia operates, and how many properties it currently owns?
We have been on the market for a couple of years already and 2020 was kind of our breakthrough year.
More or less we have around 250 properties in 5 countries with head offices in Vienna, Austria. Also, we have an amazing team of 20 people.
Operations and marketing are here in Vienna and the sales team is between everywhere and nowhere in Austria and Germany but they’re currently expanding into to Lake Garda, to Switzerland and Mallorca.
- Before using Chekin, how was the check-in process that you were operating and the different pain points you were facing?
Before using Chekin, the process was extremely long and complicated.
The full legal aspects are like a nightmare, especially in Austria as a kind of conservative country in terms of doing something new.
Here, to be fully compliant you have to do two things: You have to do guest registration and city taxes which are calculated very differently in every single city and region.
In Austria, even within the region we have various sub-regions where they are calculated differently.
The cleaning team had the task to collect the papers filled in with the personal data of the clients, each of them with a ruling number. After that we had to forward it to the local governmental body or agency depending on the region, so they could calculate the tax and the invoice and we paid it.
- What mistakes they made before they were able to enjoy Chekin?
Mistakes are bound to happen whether it is human or like for example when papers get lost and you forget it. Mistakes are bound to happen sooner or later!
Also, a lot of bureaucracy in the process. Especially if you are being new in the industry it is kind of hard to scale what makes it pretty hard to add additional properties once you have this kind of boring process you have to do and it takes a lot of time of course.
- After learning about the features of Chekin, what benefits have they obtained?
I think the more important thing is to be compliant. Especially if you are a new company so you want to make sure you do everything right.
German speaking regions are pretty strict in terms of deadlines and making sure that everything is proper, that you pay it correctly and you pay it on time (so about securing your business) And this is one of the main and most important benefits that I have seen using Chekin.
I mean it is kind of a risk hedging if you want to put it like this because you are being able to tell your customers that you are 100% compliant and that we do everything properly.
- One of the advantages we offer is the save time and speed of the processes, do you think so after having tried it?
The fact is that Chekin has helped us to scale our company but also to focus on things that actually can bring more benefits to the company and customer.
As we started saving time with Chekin we could spend more of our efforts on taking care of our customers a bit better.
Obviously this would not have been possible if we were been doing the same mundane things like we were doing some years back.
- Another benefit, could be spending more time trying to improve the guest experience for repeat guests?
We are in the hospitality industry so everything has to do with hospitality from beginning to the end. If you want recurring guests you need to have main focus on that because if you are stuck doing mundane things like making sure you collect papers and pay taxes… then you will not be able to concentrate on other things which can bring better benefits to the company and customers.
With Chekin you save time on this and you can spend time on taking care of customers and your guests a bit better.
- Do you think that the check-in contactless experience will have more importance in a post COVID situation? Do you think that it could be a solution for the hospitality industry to recover faster and reduce some operation cost?
Yes. After Covid guests want to stay away from other people and do things like guest registration beforehand or keys without personal handover which is kind in line with vacation rentals.
Obviously you still have customers who request another kind of demand, maybe because you have a huge house and for this reason they may prefer to have someone to welcome them and say: “this is where you have the whirlpool, this is how the sauna works, around the corner you find a kitchen…”
But I personally do not think that guests will demand this moving forward as our guest’s mentality is changing somehow because they want to have something unique and different and that is what you get when you rent a house.
If you want to continue to discover by first hand the benefits and value that Chekin can bring to your business as it has done with Guestia, we leave you the full interview so you can judge for yourself:
Guestia has been able to evolve in both technological and personal aspects and has improved the quality of its product thanks to the software provided by Chekin.
They have streamlined the online check-in process by making it automatic and contactless from booking to check-out.
With this technique, they have achieved the goal they most sought: increase the time spent with your customers so that you can follow them closely and make them more satisfied.
