Payman Club - Managing Hotels & Holidays Rentals
HOTELIERS' VOICE S2E9
Na’ím Anís Paymán, Chief Revolutionary of the Paymán Club, speaks about the similarities and differences in managing holiday rentals and hotels. Payman Club has nine hotels and more than 100 short-term properties. The company has also developed Zeevou, an award-winning PMS and Channel Manager, for serviced apartment providers and hotels.
During the pandemic Na’ím asked how best to recover from the blow. He came up with a solution. “In the UK, there was a fairly strong shrinkage in buyer activity for hotels. And so I thought if I buy a small hotel, or guesthouse, I could add some kitchenettes and turn it into an apart hotel and keep doing what we're doing.” He continued to expand the portfolio.
Na’ím says in many respects running vacation rentals and hotels is similar. The pandemic habit of short lead times for bookings has continued and is true for both. Guests have become more wary and pedantic, he says. And there are more last-minute cancellations.
During the pandemic restrictions, the differences between hotels and vacation rentals was minimal as restaurants were shut anyway. “We were pretty much applying the vacation rental model to individual rooms”.
Since the gradual removal of restrictions, the difference between the two has grown, however. He says guests have different expectations. Hotel guests assume there will be food laid on and there will be a reception.
“For vacation rentals, you have to build up a team remotely and try to create a corporate culture. It’s important to avoid misunderstandings, form a bond of trust and address issues as they come up.”
Na’ím tells us he wanted to purchase software to manage the combination of multi-unit sites, but there was nothing available, so they built their own Zeevou. “The beauty of it is we now have the flexibility to run multiple hotels and all our other properties from one centralised login across multiple countries in different currencies. It’s a great help.”
The system allows for automated assignment of cleans and carries out a lot of admin.
Once they start cleaning, we can track the location. They take photos of every room and the bathrooms. And we save those as timestamped photos or videos. If a guest complains you have something to back up that a clean was achieved
But it also helps office staff to double-check things look the way they should. We also have the ability for them to report maintenance issues, which then get fed back straight into the system for the admin team to deal with
Feedback, he tells us, is crucial. To improve feedback, better technology will help, he believes. Already Zeevou allows guests to confirm bookings in a similar way to checking in for flights. “We’re redesigning that process at the moment to allow for upselling add-ons.”
He says working closely with users of the software is important. He organises monthly meetings to discuss feedback on priorities. It’s important they feel their feedback will be acted on. “We can’t develop everything for everyone at the same time, but we try as much as possible to get the right balance between what users are asking for and what we feel the product should have going for it.”