19 November - 2020PropTechOutlookAlso, if any customer makes a reservation using OTAs, all the information flows directly into the Gearco platform. Knight says, "Our platform eliminates the manual processes, making them automated and almost paperless."Another factor unique to the extended-stay segment of hotels is increased revenue with efficient tax management. The tax model works in a way that it gets decreased over time, so the platform uses automated rate adaptation that increases the rate as the taxes decrease, thus generating increased revenue for the clients. "An average length of stay for many of our properties is close to three years and most of them have increased their revenue by as much as 30 percent using the Gearco platform," states Knight.For the onboarding of new properties on the platform, Gearco follows a very streamlined process. The company has a dedicated team that collects all the information to build the property from top to bottom, including testing the rates, users, and security models. After that, the company provides on-site and remote training for seamless onboarding of the hotel onto the Gearco platform. "We build out the entire property along with all the training at very economical rates for a seamless onboarding of our clients," says Knight. Further, the platform has the ability to clone and replicate the rules and the processes of a property to all the other properties if a client has multiple properties. Knight shares a customer success story of a client that has 11 properties. The property owners had to be overly reliant on manual processes. They were struggling to find an appropriate property management system that could cater to the extended-stay business model. After a successful demo and obtaining a go-ahead from the client, Gearco implemented its platform on all 11 properties within two days. On day three, all the training was imparted, and the platform was up and running; within a year, the client observed 20 percent more revenue using the Gearco platform.Dedicated Solutions for Extended Stay HotelsGearco's Relationship Management (GRM) platform tracks progress and success by connecting all relevant activities, including research and development, product roadmap, system change requests, customer advocacy feedback, sales activities, and many others. This ensures that all team members involved with any process are connected, informed, responsible, and measured for success. More importantly, the company takes feedback from its clients and makes changes in its platform as well as develops additional solutions accordingly to help them sail through any hurdles in their path. "While many of Gearco's offerings were developed after receiving feedback from our customers, we have also created a great many technologically-advanced and disruptive solutions that never exist before," explains Knight.Staying Ahead of CompetitionOne of the most distinguishing factors for Gearco is a dedicated customer advocacy team that continually contacts the customer to eliminate any issues that the client experiences. Additionally, if the business model of property changes, the development team of Gearco makes the required changes and adjusts the platform to accommodate those modifications at no cost to the client. Gearco boasts of an organizational culture similar to Google, where innovation is prioritized, creativity is valued, and communication lines between every level of the company exist and are always open. "Although we have a chain of command, everyone at Gearco is comfortable reaching out to one another with ideas, problems, or suggestions, which allows us in solving problems and engineering solutions that exceed expectations," adds Knight. Future Shines BrightWhile the COVID 19 Pandemic has adversely affected businesses across industries, the extended-stay industry is gaining more customer traction. Hence, to facilitate a seamless customer stay at the property, Gearco is investing heavily in adding more features and deploying additional solutions to improve front desk and property services. "This year, we'll deploy more than 7 major solutions to improve loss prevention and customer fraud, while also releasing over 50 other platform enhancements as part of our continuous product delivery," informs Knight. Also, Due to an extensive 90 plus day length of stays, extended stays are more Operationally (SOP) focused than Sales (S&OP); hence Gearco is investing heavily in closing the SOP policy gap by deploying automated solutions to improve how the front desk services customers as well as the property itself. Gearco is also launching the Company Brand Review (CBR) feature in which the company is going a have periodic sessions with the customers for a comprehensive service health check of properties by reviewing more than 75 KPIs. For the last 20 years, we have been working to improve extended-stay hotels' operational efficiency and mitigate any challenges they face
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