Germany: Munich-based hospitality technology provider and apartment operator, limehome, has revealed that it has grown 400 per cent over the past two years, partly crediting its futuristic approach to its property management software.
As one of a growing band of hospitality companies using platforms that resist ever becoming out-of-date, limehome’s so-called ‘composable hospitality’ allows operators to bolt together off-the shelf tools and add those that they develop themselves in-house. According to the company, it is the most powerful way to build a PMS and technology ecosystem that is bespoke, affordable and scalable.
This has allowed limehome to create a unique, staffless guest experience, and onboard new properties at speeds previously unheard of [less than 24 hours], helping the business achieve a fivefold increase in both revenue and the size of its portfolio over the past two years. It forecasts a 60 per cent compound annual growth rate [CAGR] for the next five years and boasts an average occupancy rate of 90 per cent, compared to the market average of 80 per cent.
limehome built its fully digital guest journey, which saves the business around $200 per unit per month, on the API-led open hospitality platform, Apaleo. While traditional property management systems [PMS] do have integrations, limehome needed a platform that would allow it to replace tools that relied on human interaction with its own staffless alternatives.
Leveraging Apaleo, it created a seamless digital guest journey from booking to check-out, integrating the reservation and payment solutions of Apaleo with a constellation of proprietary solutions and best-of-breed third-party apps. It has also formed the foundation of limehome’s overall PMS since the company was founded in 2018, enabling limehome to achieve unprecedented levels of customisation and efficiency.
One of the most important functions limehome has been able to develop on top of Apaleo is its machine-learning yield management solution.
The tool is designed to optimise margins on every booking, dynamically adjusting rates millions of times a day in response to demand, local competitors, and seasonal trends. As a result, limehome operates with only one revenue manager across 100 locations.
While its competitors are reported to change prices around 200 times a day, limehome says that it adjusts prices approximately 10 million times in the same period.
Josef Vollmayr, co-founder and managing director of limehome, said: “Apaleo is a construction kit that we use to complement our own technology. It allows us to operate the way we operate, and without it we could not grow at this pace.
“In a typical stay, traditional hotels might have up to ten manual interactions with every reservation. It’s the trivial things that hurt the bottom line.
“Guests ask for an invoice, the check-in and check-out times, an upgrade or an extension of the stay. This may not be inconvenient for the guest, but for the hotel these interactions are very labour-intensive, time consuming and ultimately costly.
“We need all these things to be integrated into our technology. Without the flexibility that Apaleo allows, hiring for 120 locations would be a nightmare for us. By building on top of Apaleo, we don’t have to do that,” he added.
Florian Montag, VP of business development at Apaleo, said: “limehome are trailblazers when it comes to the future of property management. It never even dawned on them to use a traditional solution because they are so focused on the end product.
“The guest experience has come first at all times and this is exactly what we expect from all hospitality operators in the future. All hospitality providers will have CTOs and their roles will become some of the most important to these businesses as they curate future-proof ecosystems of software capable of consistently delivering for their brands,” he added.
In recent months, the German scale-up has grown its presence in the Benelux region [Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg], signed 82 flats in the Balgequartier district of Bremen in Germany, and announced plans to expand into new markets such as Portugal and Italy. In total, limehome has more than 3400 suites under contract at close to 120 locations in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Hungary.
In November last year, limehome received €45 million in a venture capital funding round, continuing its accelerating expansion.
