PHNX reduces costs and accelerates onboarding I Apaleo News

PHNX provides a vibrant, community-driven environment where guests can eat, drink, and connect instantly with others, offering a blend of social spaces and private areas.

This co-living concept, however, came with its own operational challenges. To offer guests a seamless experience while maintaining efficiency, PHNX needed a property management system capable of handling high guest turnover, automating key processes, and offering flexibility as the company scaled. We spoke with Frank Wesselhoefft, the General Manager at PHNX, to learn how they overcame these challenges and leveraged technology to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and provide an exceptional guest experience.

Challenge: Time-consuming manual tasks and slow staff onboarding

As PHNX grew, its legacy hotel PMS struggled to meet the demands of a large aparthotel. Manual processes, such as night audits and guest check-ins, were time-consuming and led to operational inefficiencies. Additionally, the complex nature of the system made onboarding new staff difficult and slow.

Credit: Alexander Bernhard

Solution: Implementing a cloud-based property management platform

PHNX made the switch to Apaleo, a cloud-native, open property management platform that integrates seamlessly with third-party applications and automates key tasks. By automating processes like night audits and check-ins, Apaleo reduced the need for manual interventions and simplified day-to-day operations.

Result: 25% cost reduction on property management and 80% reduction in training time

Switching to Apaleo led to significant operational improvements: PHNX reduced operational costs by 25%, mainly by automating the night audit process and minimising manual tasks at the reception. New staff can successfully onboard onto the Apaleo platform within a week, compared to the 3-6 months required for their legacy hotel PMS, resulting in an 80% reduction in training time.

"For me, when I joined the company, it was very easy to get into the system because it’s self-explanatory, and that makes it very easy to train our staff." Frank shared.

Challenge: Managing high guest turnover

PHNX serves a diverse guest base, with visitors staying for one night or several months. Managing the logistics of frequent check-ins, check-outs, and payments manually became overwhelming for the staff, leading to inefficiencies and missed revenue opportunities.

Credit: Deep Digital

Solution: Implementing a revenue management system, happyhotel

To tackle this, PHNX integrated happyhotel, a powerful revenue management platform, with Apaleo to automate pricing and adjust rates in real-time based on demand. The seamless integration between Apaleo (PMS) and happyhotel (RMS) enabled automatic data exchange, reducing manual input and minimising errors. This allowed PHNX to efficiently manage pricing across different distribution channels and respond faster to market changes.

Additionally, this integration gave PHNX the flexibility to manage rates across multiple distribution channels from a single platform, helping the hotel respond faster to market changes and guest behaviours.

"With happyhotel managing revenue autonomously, PHNX maximised its occupancy and profitability while minimising manual effort." Frank added.

Result: Increased occupancy rate from 60% to 81%

happyhotel’s automated rate adjustments helped PHNX increase occupancy from 60% to 81%, optimising room availability and revenue. The real-time demand-based rate adjustments allowed PHNX to capitalise on market trends, leading to higher profitability. Frank mentioned that happyhotel operates independently, requiring only occasional supervision, freeing up staff to focus on more strategic tasks.

Challenge: Maintaining high service standards with limited staff

PHNX operates with a lean team and wanted to ensure high service standards without necessarily increasing their staff, especially amidst labor shortages. The goal was to implement a self-service guest journey to improve guest satisfaction while keeping operations scalable.

Credit: Raimar von Wienskowski

Solution: Fully digitalised guest journey with straiv

PHNX implemented straiv, an end-to-end guest experience platform integrated with Apaleo, to automate the entire guest journey - from booking to check-out. This allowed them to handle pre-arrival communications, digital check-ins, and online payments, all without needing staff assistance.

"With Apaleo, I can build my own whole hotel world if I want to." Frank added, emphasising how Apaleo’s inherent flexibility and the Apaleo Store give them a catalogue of applications to choose from.

Result: Higher guest satisfaction while reducing labour costs by 75%

The self-service guest journey allows PHNX to scale guest services without significantly increasing staffing levels, positioning the brand for future growth. PHNX operates with just three reception staff members, compared to the nine to twelve staff previously needed, representing a 75% reduction in labour costs.

A dive into the tech stack of PHNX:

Browse apps in the Apaleo Store:

Title image credit: Alexander Bernhard

PHNX achieves a 25% cost reduction and 80% faster staff onboarding