Giving old buildings new soul
The ZERO Hotels are a unique collection of properties across Portugal that offer guests an unparalleled lodging experience. They currently have three properties, with an additional four coming soon. Their ‘ZERO Box Lodge’ is the most popular offering, inspired by Japanese capsule hotels where guests stay in minimalistic wooden boxes equipped with a private bathroom in a shared dorm.
While in-room amenities are limited at ZERO Box Lodge properties, they make up for it throughout the building. At their flagship property, ZERO Box Lodge Porto, guests have access to 2 trendy restaurants, 3 bars, a rooftop terrace, a movie theater, a sauna, and a lounge with library access.
Bernardo Thierstein, General Manager at The ZERO Box Lodge Porto, said their idea and mission “was to find buildings with history and turn them into something different and exciting to give back to the community and the city.”
No longer trapped by tech
Bernardo joined The ZERO Hotels in October 2021, when the pandemic still heavily affected the hospitality industry. He was responsible for reopening the Porto property and decided to switch from their previous property management system (PMS) to Cloudbeds. He knew that The ZERO Hotels would be expanding across Portugal, and they would need a system that was easy to use and provided the freedom to experiment with rate plans and promotions to drive more direct bookings.
As one of the early Cloudbeds adopters at a previous property, Bernardo has over 8 years of experience working with the Cloudbeds platform and team. After implementing Cloudbeds over the years, Bernardo has a great deal of experience getting the system up and running. This latest implementation was “super easy and almost all automatic.”
More face time, less admin time
Cloudbeds’ easy-to-use interface was quickly adopted by the team and has improved the overall guest experience. Bernardo says,
Our experience has become more guest-centric since staff spends less time with admin work and more time with guests.
They have beautiful, modern websites for each property and were able to seamlessly integrate Cloudbeds booking engine to match the design. Bernardo notes that “it works with our website and color scheme and instills trust in our visitors when booking.” Payments are collected securely through their booking engine with state-of-the-art security measures to increase trust and transparency further while protecting both travelers and the ZERO Hotels.
In addition to their website, The ZERO Hotels drives bookings through Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, and Google Hotel Search, which are managed through the Cloudbeds Channel Manager. Since they cater to different audiences based on property type, The ZERO Hotels experiments with different channels to see what performs best for their segments.
Across properties, their direct booking rate has risen to 25% in part due to their connection to Google Hotel Search and integrated booking engine. Bernardo plans to continue experimenting with the booking engine’s design and promotional offerings to increase their direct booking rate over time.
Automated rates that buy more time
Cloudbeds’ pricing intelligence engine (PIE) is being used across The ZERO Hotels’ properties to automate pricing strategies and monitor competitor and market trends. Bernardo says,
We automate a lot of our pricing with PIE, and it has allowed us a lot more time to spend training staff since it’s doing part of our job automatically.
Their ZERO Box Lodge property in Coimbra has increased its average daily rate (ADR) from 10-25% based on the conditions set through their pricing intelligence engine.
The switch to Cloudbeds has significantly reduced the time that The ZERO Hotels spends training new staff as the simple layout and user interface is easy to understand and extremely user-friendly. All their staff members are enrolled in Cloudbeds University and have access to hundreds of training courses to improve their knowledge of the system and troubleshoot any roadblocks.
A true partner in ambition
Bernardo cites Cloudbeds as playing a part in the general manager he is today. With a law and business background, Bernardo was initially unfamiliar with the hospitality industry. After working with Cloudbeds over the past 8 years, the system has “really helped me understand some of the more difficult concepts, develop strategies, and better train staff members to deliver memorable experiences to guests.”
