In conversation with Ralf Krause, co-founder and CEO at Adapt Apartments

Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us what makes your hotel or host role stand out.
Hi. I am Ralf Krause, a youngtimer, married and have three children. Co-Founder and CEO of ADAPT Group. We currently have just over 400 apartments in four destinations and have three more locations with 220 apartments in the pipeline. From short to long stays — we can do it all. The guest decides. That is also our company philosophy — everything we have done so far and what we still want to do, we have presented to potential guests and our regular guests for decision and coordination. From location and service to equipment and design — our customers and guests have a say in everything. This also applies to the topic of sustainability, which is very important to us.

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Did you or how did you do revenue management before you switched to happyhotel?
Nope, it's all done by hand. Manual, complicated and extremely time-consuming and manpower intensive. Always and everywhere with an eye on Booking and Co.

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What were the decision criteria for Happyhotel?
We had you — or Rafael — at SO last year! Getting to know Apart — maybe you still remember us? The auction during the evening event with the most expensive sheep in history? It was a really easy decision for us. We looked at several systems, but no other one showed us this high level of added value compared to happyhotel. After a short test phase and support from super pleasant support (Yves is awesome, super nice, extremely competent and always solution-oriented). Onboarding has never been easier.

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How does Happyhotel make everyday life easier for you?
We've left the reins pretty loose by now and give algorithms the necessary freedom to learn and make decisions. Of course, we are still monitoring the effects of digital pricing on a daily basis, but notice that happyhotel is becoming more precise day by day. In the long term, this saves us a lot of hours as a team every week. In addition, there are the analyses, predefined and self-configured, which contribute to decision-making and control. If you can now export via Excel or CSV, we are almost perfectly happy.

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Which feature do you like best?
The pickup is brilliant, everything at a glance that I had to laboriously put together beforehand, then the comparison with the competition — you can see where you and the others are standing at any given time. The forecast will be exciting, we are currently writing down the figures once a week in order to compare them retroactively with the real figures, but the hit rate seems to be quite accurate and with more time, the algorithm will continue to learn. We are eagerly following the BETA version of Analysis 2.0, let's see what else is going on here.

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What does the dynamic pricing process look like for you NOW?
Most of the prices are now paid by Happyhotel. ADR and RevPAR are developing positively in significant steps. Only in long-term stays do we set the rates manually, as we have committed ourselves to price stability with our long-standing regular guests here and will continue to do so.

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How has your average working day changed since the integration of happyhotel?
Take a relaxed look at Happyhotel in the morning and forget about it for the rest of the day. I save a lot of time in controlling and have more time for important things — my team and my guests.

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Which function feels like saving you the most time?
The elimination of manual yielding. Significantly more reliable figures for my business calculation in the forecast for workload and ADR. We book with us every day — and that's why we are on balance sheet almost every day and regularly question our forecast calculation.

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Have you already made any noticeable additional sales and if so, by what percentage have you been able to increase your turnover through happyhotel? (estimate)
It is still too early to make a final statement to comprehensively separate happyhotel's impact from the extremely positive market situation. What we can say is that ADR rose by just under 8% and RevPAR by over 15%.

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What are your personal tips for future users of happyhotel?
Just do it — you won't regret it. You can try it out for free and only then decide.

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What do you want for Happyhotel's future?
More freedom in creating your own evaluations and corresponding export options in formats other than PDF. There are still so many ways to further process or evaluate the data from happyhotel, for example with UMNION or make.com.

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Digitalization in the hotel industry — what should a hotelier start with?
Well with digitization — away from paper, away from manual work processes. Digital guest directory — preferably via your own homepage and a QR code in the most important places. Checkin/checkout. Payment. registration form. Educate your subcontractors to only submit invoices online so that you no longer have to store dozens of folders for the registry every year. We must of course motivate our team and our guests and take them with us on the journey.

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What is your most important tool?
APALEO as PMS and UMNION as CRM

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Name three things that you would give to other hoteliers.
Clearly define the company and brand and clearly position your own product. Create and live a credible and sustainable corporate mission statement.

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