The Central House customer story

The Central House make guests and staff happier with Mews

The boutique hostel chain frees up hours of staff time, improves guest happiness, and discovers the power of the Mews Marketplace.

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98% payment automation

across all guest transactions

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8% increase in RevPAB

through Revenue Management integration

Time

Six hours saved per week

for every front of house staff

About The Central House

The Central House is a chain of boutique hostels that provide the services and amenities of a hotel – bars, restaurants, pool – but with the ethos of a hostel. They welcome 200,000 guests every year across their six properties located in five countries.

When searching for a new property management system, The Central House were looking for a cloud-based solution that would enable an improved guest experience through payment automation and effective personalization.

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Mews Payments transformed staff's day-to-day

Pain

Front desk staff spent lots of time on manual tasks such as checking no-shows and cancellations, charging them accordingly. Managing and transferring multiple currencies for bookings was also difficult, and sometimes resulted in human error.

Solution

Mews automatically checks and charges non-refundables, no-shows and cancellations. Payment automation means that all bookings and payments can be centralized in the head office, while reservations and cancellations are never missed because they're processed automatically.

Result

• 98% of payments are now automated
• Each front of house staff member saves at least six hours per week through automation
• Eliminated manual errors such as missed cancellations
• The hostels are almost entirely cashless
• Enabled a more efficient, centralized company structure

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“We start our relationship with the guest much earlier now – the process is much easier than before. You can spend more time on the welcoming process instead of the check-in process.”

Albert Polo Aibar
General Manager, The Central House

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More personalized guest interactions, from emails to front desk

Pain

Traditional check-in processes and generic guest engagement methods often focus on transactional interactions rather than meaningful ones, weakening the guest experience.

Solution

Mews Operations allows staff to be flexible and accommodating when they welcome guests. If the reception is busy, staff can take guests to a quieter area where they sit down together and check in with a tablet. It's also easy to send emails prior to arrival, leveraging pre-captured guest data and smart upselling tools to begin a more personalized, targeted guest relationship.

Result

• Guest ratings on Booking.com have increased from 9.0 to 9.2 in Barcelona, and 9.1 to 9.3 in Marrakech
• More innovative and profitable pre-arrival upselling through Oaky, such as henna tattoos and wine tasting
• Guests are more likely to visit another hostel within the group, partly thanks to easy-to-use discount codes sent via email

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“With Mews Open API, we've tried so many different things. We're doing tests and trials and our world has just expanded. Instead of paying thousands and thousands of dollars for a new integration, it’s just two days and you are up and running with a new app.”

Albert Polo Aibar
General Manager, The Central House

Integration spotlight

Through Mews Marketplace, The Central House use five integrations, from payment processing to business accounting.

Pace

Pace is a revenue management and optimization solution with the ability to automate pricing. The Central House are rated very highly on Booking.com (e.g. 9.6 in Lisbon) and prices were already on the upper end of the scale, but Pace encouraged them to push prices further, resulting in an 8% RevPAB increase in some properties, with strong occupancy rates too.

Looking ahead

The Central House have plans to continue expanding, opening more properties in new locations across Europe. The team will also continue to search for useful apps in Mews Marketplace, with guest messaging solutions a new area for exploration, as well as tools that will help to centralize resources and processes.

Be the next success

If you're impressed at what these properties have achieved, why not find out what Mews could do for you?

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