In conversation with Patrick Thoma, Head of Operations at Black F

Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us what makes your hotel or host role stand out.
My name is Patrick Thoma and I am Head of Operations at Black F. We opened our first house in Freiburg with 138 serviced apartments in November 2020. The second building in Freiburg, our Black F Tower, with 54 apartments, will follow in October. Our goal is to provide both long-term and short-term guests with a cozy temporary home. The guest trip is completely digital, from booking to check-out. On site, we still rely on a friendly team that takes care of our guests' wishes.

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Did you or how did you do revenue management before you switched to happyhotel?
At the beginning, we worked with static rates. In the short-stay segment in particular, however, there is a lot of potential to increase ADR and RevPAR.

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What were the decision criteria for Happyhotel?
We looked around for a revenue management tool that offers us this opportunity to yield in the short-stay segment, but to display transparent and continuous prices in the mid and long-term segment. Since we work with very few employees, it was important to me that it runs largely automatically and that we only have to make adjustments from time to time. We first came to happyhotel through the free integration Apaleo, which provides good analyses of the pick-up and capacity utilization.

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How does Happyhotel make everyday life easier for you?
My day starts in the morning with the automatic reports from happyhotel. This gives me a good overview of how we are currently doing. Based on the ADR, I can see that we were able to achieve a nice increase over the previous year in the short stay and that prices vary depending on occupancy and demand without having to invest a lot of time every day.

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Which feature do you like best?
I definitely like the analysis options the best. This allows me to see which segments we generate the most revenue and provides us with important key figures that help us position ourselves.

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What does the dynamic pricing process look like for you NOW?
Since we've been using Happyhotel, our shortstay rates have been automatically yielded, so we've been able to achieve significant increases in ADR and RevPAR. In the beginning, I checked daily whether the prices offered met the demand, but now I trust the algorithm and am pleased with the increased turnover.

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How has your average working day changed since the integration of happyhotel?
Since we've been using Happyhotel, I always check the daily email report first in the morning. Fortunately, I don't have to invest a lot of time, but enjoy the automatic algorithm.

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What do you like best about Happyhotel? Which function feels like saving you the most time?
The automatic price adjustments save me a lot of time in everyday life, as events, trade fairs and holidays have already been saved and the price changes depending on demand.

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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?
We were able to increase both ADR and RevPAR by more than 10% while maintaining the same workload.

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What are your personal tips for future users of happyhotel?
It's best to start with the free integration and then try it out.

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What do you want for Happyhotel's future?

Even more sales increase 🙂

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Digitalization in the hotel industry — what should a hotelier start with?

Digital guest trip and digital guest directory

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What is your most important tool?

Our PMS from Apaleo

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Name three things that you would share with other hoteliers.
Create a USP, invest in a modern product, a clear positioning

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