Uplisting helped Propke grow by 400% for 20% of the price of Guesty.
Propke is a vacation rental management company based in Beirut, Lebanon. They manage over 100 properties in Beirut with plans to add more properties in neighbouring countries.
Hady started their business, Propke, in Beirut Lebanon, where they began working with a few different apartment owners around the city and rented out vacation rentals to generate money for them on Airbnb and Booking.com.
As they began to grow and they realised they needed to use property management software to manage their listings and continue to grow the business.
“Initially we started purely as an Airbnb business, but then to start increasing the occupancy, we started venturing into other platforms. Mostly it's either Airbnb, Booking.com, or our own direct booking.”
Propke began working with a well-known property management software but soon ran into pricing problems because Beirut has relatively inexpensive rental options compared to a city like London or Paris. Using a platform like Guesty became cost-prohibitive.
“Initially we used to use a property management software called Guesty. We realized they were costly and at some point, we knew that we needed to stop using them because they were taking a percentage of our bookings. I was reaching a phase where we were never going to be able to break even at this cost. It's just too expensive."
As they started to grow the business, the Propke team also quickly realized they needed a true software partner with features that scaled as they grew and better customer service.
“The customer service is really weak at Guesty. When we talked to Guesty it's like talking to a very large corporation, they take ages to answer. We didn't understand why it always took so long, but I guess they have their own structure.”
“Customer service at Uplisting is much better. And the technical features that Uplisting offers us are simply much better.”
After working with the software for a while, Hady knew they needed a different platform with better pricing options and features to grow their business.
At the time, Propke was starting to manage more properties, but it was critical that they had better pricing options so they could grow faster. Hady was introduced to Uplisting after searching through multiple property management solutions.
Because of the fixed pricing option and excellent customer service, Uplisting stood out.
“Uplisting offered fixed-fee pricing on listings rather than percentages, which is great. And since they were a small team, the customer service was very proactive with us.”
Perhaps most importantly, Uplisting had a growing feature set that mirrored what Propke was looking for.
“We use the consolidated calendar and the inbox for all communications, Airbnb, Booking.com, and direct bookings. I cannot run my business if my calendar is not consolidated.
Uplisting takes their time to develop their features, but once they develop them, they're actually more careful about the details. Most of the features that they are actually developing themselves on the product roadmap are actually ideal for our own process development. So that's great for us.”
Propke uses Uplisting’s growing feature set to improve business efficiency.
“With Uplisting, I never have to exit the software to take care of something. The more time my team and I, in the software, the more time-saving we have and the more efficient we are.”
Hady also leveraged a unique API connector to bridge their custom-developed customer software to Uplisting to create cost-saving processes.
“We have our own software that allows us to manage the operation on a daily basis. So it's an API connecting the software and Uplisting. On a daily basis, actually the information is updated instantly and we understand financially where we stand on things, especially for collections. And our operational software is instantly updated every time they have a new booking or every time there's an update or a cancellation. This saves me a lot of time and makes sure I don't lose money."
Uplisting’s fixed pricing allows Propke to grow their business without the worries of costs compared to other software in the market.
“I have 100 apartments with Uplisting and pay less than what I was paying with only 20 apartments at Guesty. I get value for the money that I pay for Uplisting.”
Finally, Propke grew their business by 400% with Uplisting. Not only did it help save them time, but it provided them the reliability they needed to grow, scale, and never worry about double-bookings ever.
Couldn’t scale the business with just manual effort
Percentage-based pricing was cost-prohibitive
Weak customer support from popular channel managers
Saving time on manual management tasks and efforts
Saving costs by paying a flat-fee with Uplisting
From reliable channel management to direct bookings to guest messaging to virtually every other aspect of your property business - there's Uplisting.
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