How an owner app can turn property admin into revenue
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Challenge
Sykes Cottages has rented quality holiday cottages for more than 30 years across the UK, Ireland, and New Zealand – 22,500 properties and 2 million guests a year. Its customer-facing app already served holidaymakers well, but the relationship with cottage owners was the gap.
Owners were spending too much time on administration and chasing down booking information, and Sykes wanted to strengthen retention by removing that friction: make it easy to run a property, so owners could focus on giving guests a great stay.
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Solution
Sykes partnered with Apadmi – the group Droids On Roids is part of – to build it. Everyday access to critical information was the number one priority, so we pulled a wide set of data points into a single hub: guest information, changeover dates and times, property queries, cleaning tasks, and changeover admin.
Communication was the second pillar. Easy navigation, push notifications, and a comprehensive information hub cut down the calls owners had to make to Sykes, and smoothed contact between owners and their guests. The third was income: owners can now track and predict earnings more accurately, see when a property is booked, confirm when guests have paid, and keep tighter control of payments – real confidence in projected monthly income.
We also built the Property Optimiser: five fundamental changes that make a listing “optimal” – allowing pets, upgrading pricing models, exploring flexible short-break options – each applied with a single tap. An optimized property earns, on average, 15% more revenue and takes 25% more bookings.
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Results
Adoption was fast: 11,000 owners and counting signed on within the first months, with feedback overwhelmingly positive. In its first weeks live, the Property Optimiser drew more than 320 owner opt-ins, each one a property being tuned for more bookings and more revenue.
One owner summed up the response:
“Brilliant new app – thank you! It will make life so much easier. We can keep track of everything conveniently… Now we have all we need in one place and readily to hand. Perfect.”
Recognition
- Project of the Year – Travolution Awards 2024
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