Hotels around Europe are getting equipped with digital brains thanks to Slovenian startup Facility, which helps everyone from managers to housekeepers work more efficiently.
The world of hotel work is often chaotic. Luka Berger, the founder of Facility, discovered that during the summer of 2012 while working at a hotel in Yellowstone National Park. Despite all the modern technology, organizing work was still based on phone calls, paper sheets and searching for people in charge. It was often confusing and wasted a lot of time. Luka saw room for improvement everywhere around the hotel and he came back to Slovenia with an ambitious idea in mind. One that might even trigger a revolution in hotel business.
Together with his friend Aljaž Ketiš, Luka started developing a solution for all the communication problems among hotel staff. Soon a specialized platform called Facility was created and today it is used by more than 100 hotels. Another proof that Slovene startup in on the right track came recently in the form of a 550.000 euro investment.
Facility enables a complete overview of all the tasks and requests of the hotel staff. In just a matter of seconds, a housekeeper can send a maintenance request, check out which room to clean next or inform the reception desk that a room is ready for the guest to check in. Everyone gets the updated info instantly and there is no more confusion.
In practice, Facility helped a 200-room hotel save 200 man hours per month, use 3000 fewer sheets of paper, reduce inventory loss for 15% and report three times more maintenance issues. And it’s so user-friendly the staff needs only one day to learn how to use it. Even the housekeepers were pleasantly surprised and when you impress them, you know you’re on the right path.
Facility was part of ABC Accelerator in Slovenia and both founders agree that entering ABC’s program was the breaking point for Facility and the best possible decision they could have made. The hard work of other startups kept them motivated and focused and the knowledge and contacts they gathered enabled them to make enormous progress in a matter of months.
What is the next step for a startup that just got a sizeable investment? Facility is planning on expanding to more countries and to make at least a thousand hotels smarter than they are right now. The next goal is to enter the US market, where more hotels and bigger investments await.
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