In conversation with Kathlyn Voss host and daughter of the owner of the chocolate hotel

Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us what makes your hotel or host role stand out.
My name is Kathlyn Voss and I recently joined my parents at the 80-room hotel. Our hotel is the only Chocolate hotel Germany's. That actually says everything about what sets us apart — uniqueness!

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Did you or how did you do revenue management before you switched to happyhotel?
Yes. My parents had integrated “yielding” into our old PMS. The prices were gradually adjusted depending on the utilization raised. But that was always the same. Raising prices, for example for heavily booked periods or individual days, even before the capacity limit was reached, was only possible with enormous effort. So not at all.

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What were the decision criteria for Happyhotel?
Since not only I but also my father works with it, it had to be in German. Intuitive usability and a strong algorithm were important to me. It was important to him that he had good support that he could reach by phone and that it wasn't too complicated to use. He also has certain key figures that he previously calculated manually using his Excel lists. These are now also displayed graphically.

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What does the dynamic pricing process look like for you NOW?
I visit Happyhotel in the morning and usually accept all price suggestions for the next 2-3 months. About once a week, I go through the price suggestions for the next 365 days. That costs me a total of maybe 1 hour a week.
My father uses the analysis area very intensively to get an overview of the future booking situation and to monitor competitors' prices.

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Which features of happyhotel do you no longer want to miss?
None at all! But the booking curve in particular is incredibly interesting. We are currently still working on around 20-30% of the workload within 2 weeks. This allows you to assess the booking situation much better despite spontaneous bookings!

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How has your average working day changed since the integration of happyhotel?
We can now control our prices on a daily basis!

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What is the best thing about Happyhotel?
That it is so uncomplicated!

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Which function feels like saving you the most time?
The price suggestions, which accepts with one click and thus also changes all prices directly.

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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?
Yes! It is difficult to say exactly what is due to Happyhotel, as demand was generally higher this year than ever before and we were able to achieve higher prices as a result. Without happyhotel, we would probably not have been able to implement this adjustment.
In the period June to October, we increased our average rate by around €30 compared to 2019, while capacity utilization also increased by almost 10%. Unfortunately we have no past data in happyhotel due to our PMS change. I'm already looking forward to next year, when we can also use the previous year's comparisons.

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What are your personal tips for future users of happyhotel?
Just test it, it hardly takes any work to set it up and you understand right away how it works. If you don't use it, you simply miss out on revenue.

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What do you want for Happyhotel's future?
That man Restrictions also as easy as managing the price suggestions in Happyhotel 🙂