The digital blueprint behind YourFavoriteBed

What began as a two-person project in 2023, with just six apartments, has swiftly grown into YourFavoriteBed, a forward-thinking hospitality brand. Founded in 2024 by Moritz Greiner and Antonia Liewald, the company now operates over eleven properties across Germany. Their mission is simple: to foster long-term guest relationships, offer stylish stays with modern comfort, streamline operations, and deliver a fully digital guest experience.

As co-founders, Moritz and Antonia thereby complement each other perfectly. Moritz brings entrepreneurial expertise, a strategic mindset, and a sharp eye for identifying new locations. Antonia, on the other hand, adds strong business know-how, boundless creative energy, and a keen sense of design, shaping the very core and essence of the brand.

However, as their project began to gain momentum, they soon encountered limitations with their old PMS. It lacked the automation, scalability, and customisation needed to keep pace with their growth and digital-first vision.

"I needed a system tailored to our specific needs, fully automated. Our old PMS just couldn’t deliver that. Apaleo was the perfect solution for us because it gives us the flexibility to build our own, customised system," said Moritz.

Choosing Apaleo marked a real turning point. With the implementation of the API-first platform, Moritz and Antonia finally unlocked full access to automation and customisation. Operations became more streamlined, workflows scalable, and the foundation for long-term growth was firmly set. When we spoke with Moritz, co-founder and managing partner of YourFavoriteBed GmbH, it became clear that choosing Apaleo was the game changer in their journey.

Challenge: Lack of clear visibility on payments and an unsustainable accounting system

Limited visibility into incoming payments and outstanding balances was slowing things down at YourFavoriteBed. Without automated folios or dashboards, Moritz and Antonia had to manually track payments and open balances using Excel sheets, reconciling each payment with the corresponding bank account.

At the same time, accounting was entirely manual, and document based. For each booking, an invoice had to be created by hand, posted individually, and reviewed by a back-office staff member. This time-consuming and error-prone process quickly reached its limits, putting a strain on both resources and efficiency.

As the business expanded, the manual workload grew even more burdensome. Missed or delayed payment reminders now led to lost revenue. And with no audit-proof structure in place, the setup simply wasn’t equipped to meet the standards of financial reviewers.

Solution: Visible balances and a scalable, transaction-based accounting system

With Apaleo and Apaleo Pay in place, YourFavoriteBed transitioned to a fully automated, transaction-based accounting system. Today, everything runs quietly in the background, accurate, efficient, and completely hands-free.

Payments from all guest touchpoints get automatically matched and recorded, with open balances clearly displayed in the folios via Apaleo Pay. As a result, there is immediate clarity, showing which bookings have been settled and which still have outstanding payments.

“Setting up Apaleo Pay was incredibly easy. Now we have one central payment provider that works across all our apps and integrates smoothly with every app in our tech stack,” added Moritz.

Result: 10 hours saved weekly, higher efficiency, and reduced costs

With fully automated accounting in place, YourFavoriteBed saves up to 10 hours every week, just on finance-related tasks. Manual bank reconciliations, Excel tracking, and the risk of booking errors are now a thing of the past.

Thanks to a real-time overview of all payments, open balances, and folios, the team has full transparency into every transaction. Outstanding amounts are flagged early and can be followed up with ease, saving not only valuable time but also around €5,000 annually.

And financial audits have become easier than ever: every transaction is fully documented, traceable, and accessible with just one click.

Challenge: High volume of manual check-ins and invoices

From day one, YourFavoriteBed set out to deliver a fully digital guest experience, no front desk, just seamless self-check-in, digital check-out, personalised guest communication, smart upselling, and automated invoicing.

As the number of properties grew, daily check-ins climbed to as many as 20 arrivals per day. The manual check-in process thereby quickly became a major time sink, revealing its limitations, while manually creating and sending invoices consumed ever more resources, further adding to the administrative workload.

What Moritz and Antonia needed was a fully digital, streamlined process, one that eliminated manual tasks and made the guest journey smooth, frictionless, and entirely guest focused.

Solution: A 100% digital guest journey

YourFavoriteBed has fully digitalised their entire guest journey, from booking to check-out. The open APIs of Apaleo provide the technical foundation, seamlessly integrated with the guest journey app straiv, which covers every step of a guest’s stay.

Once a booking is confirmed, guests automatically receive a confirmation via email and WhatsApp, including a link to the digital check-in. There, they can submit all required information and, depending on the property, receive either a personalised access code or a four-digit code for the key box.

The digital check-in also triggers a verification in the guest profile, which kicks off the fully automated flow. Guests are then granted access to a digital guest folder with details such as Wi-Fi credentials, parking instructions, and curated local tips. Additionally, targeted upsell offers, like early check-in or extra cleaning, are presented automatically.

And the seamless digital experience continues at check-out with guests automatically receiving their invoice by email while billing is processed in the background without any manual intervention.

Result: 70% smooth self-check-ins from the start, with an upward trend

With the newly fully implemented, digitised guest journey, YourFavoriteBed now offers guests a smooth, modern stay that truly resonates. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and guests appreciate having all relevant information in one place, from Wi-Fi details and parking instructions to their final invoice. This level of transparency not only improves satisfaction but also significantly reduces the number of guest inquiries.

Before the automation, managing around 20 daily check-ins manually was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. This is where automation truly shines: every step is tracked, and all relevant information is centralised and instantly accessible. The result? Guests enjoy a smooth, seamless experience, while Moritz and Antonia benefit from clear processes and consistently high levels of guest care.

Looking ahead, here’s what’s next for YourFavoriteBed:

YourFavoriteBed continues to grow, with new locations already in the pipeline. And the direction is clear, anything that can be automated, will be automated. This approach keeps operational effort low while freeing up time for strategic growth and new digital innovations.

Backed by Apaleo as their technical foundation, they are following this approach consistently. The goal is to achieve maximum efficiency, scalability, and flexibility, ultimately creating a hospitality model that is not only future-ready but also nearly self-operating.

To move one step closer, the next initiative is already underway: within the next two to three months, a new door lock provider will be introduced. The aim here is to further streamline check-in and access, ensuring these processes remain fully automated and flexible.

As YourFavoriteBed continues to grow and bring their digital-first vision to life, Moritz shared a final thought on what truly makes Apaleo stand out: “Customisability is everything. You can build the tech stack that fits your needs. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and in day-to-day operations, it just works.”