Hans Brinker

The Hans Brinker hostel brand is synonymous with providing great value accommodation in popular cities such as Amsterdam and Lisbon. The Dutch brand is renowned for their spicy marketing campaigns and amusingly honest copywriting.

We spoke to Managing Director Pieter van de Zeeuw about how technology has helped keep them ahead of the pack.

Old-School Frustrations

"We first came across FLYR for Hospitality in 2019 as it had a reputation of being one of the most innovative RMS in the space and many of our colleagues were switching to their platform. In the end, we decided to switch our PMS to Mews partly to solve for this exact issue.

"Once we made the switch to Mews we made sure we did a trial with FLYR for Hospitality and one other RMS. FLYR for Hospitality was much much better! It did exactly what it promised and adjusted prices really well but also had many other great features.

"I really like that it thinks for itself and I don't have to do a lot of RM work anymore. It's just so user friendly! In fact, we have not needed to hire a dedicated Revenue Manager as a result of implementing FLYR for Hospitality.

"The onboarding was also super straightforward as the system learns fast and works immediately."

Instant Results

"Within six months of switching things on our ADR had jumped up 40% and next year it's looking to creep even higher. Out of our competitor group of eight, we used to be at the bottom and now we are in the middle and finally where we want to be. And we are almost always full!

"It really is a huge jump in revenue and that's ultimately down to the fact that the system 'dares' to ask the market what price our rooms and beds should be. For example, I would never even attempt to charge €60-70 for a 6-bed dorm – but they sell for that!"

Commercial Intelligence

"I look at the native BI tool a lot as it gives us loads of insights like what segments or OTAs are performing.

"The forecasting is so powerful and accurate that I now use FLYR for Hospitality to do all my budgeting as it kept beating our own manual forecasts so I transitioned to using it instead."

"The platform keeps analysing and learning that it can push prices further and I feel that over the next six months the system is going to learn even more."