Derag Living Hotels & SIHOT

Established in 1982, the family-run Derag Living Hotels now consists of 18 apartment hotels, offering individual spaces for working, staying and living in the best residential areas of cities including Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna. In order to keep up with guest expectations and address operational challenges across the business, Living Hotels needs to transform to move with the times. 

To facilitate this transformation, it was imperative to develop a digitalisation strategy to enable it to be more responsive to the market and meet the needs of its customers.

Challenge:

Living Hotels needed to streamline administration for employees and enhance the guest experience for improving efficiency and resource management. With the digital guest journey requiring attention, Living Hotels assembled an interdisciplinary team consisting of management and marketing experts to develop a strategy and plan of action to facilitate the transformation. 

It was important that Living Hotels got this approach right to avoid wasted investment and maximise the return from the initiatives. The aparthotel brand has previous experience of digitalisation programmes that failed to resonate with guests and staff; in one instance they installed tablets in every room which went unused by guests. Therefore, it was essential an approach was taken to get this right.

To streamline administrative tasks

Living Hotels needed to improve efficiencies of its teams, drive productivity and allow the staff to concentrate on their host responsibilities without being bogged down by administration. 

To enhance the guest experience. 

With guest expectations rising, Living Hotels were looking to release their teams to be able to prioritise the needs of its guests. Therefore it was imperative to not only provide systems that were accessible and user friendly for guests, but that would improve the efficiency and resource management for staff.

Solution

In order to hit both their objectives, Derag Living Hotels choose a selection of solutions to meet their needs. The guest journey was the focus point to see where savings could be made, from looking at guest arrival through to in-room experience 

The solution consisted of:

• SIHOT.PRE-& POST-STAY: This module allows hotels to send automated emails before and after guests’ stays. This way, hotels can communicate with guests throughout their stay by providing reminders, payment requests, and additional information. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to promote additional products, promotions, and services
• Website chatbot: For responding to guests enquiries 24/7, reducing the pressure on Reservations and Front Desk teams, handling huge numbers of recurring FAQs
• Inroom controls for temperature and lights: Allowing guests to manage the environment of their room their way
• DocuSign: To streamline agreements with business partners 
• SIHOT.KIOSK: Offering a digital terminal in the lobby allows guests to check in and out independently. It also has an integrated payment option and provides guests with their room key. Currently running in Living Hotels Frankfurt and Soulmate Garching properties

• SIHOT.GO!: Providing a mobile app for guests to manage reservations, check in, payment, request services, and access hotel information. The app also features an upselling function for room upgrades and additional services. Currently running in the Frankfurt property

“We’re now able to provide much more information to our guests ahead of arrival and follow up post-stay allowing us to deliver a full guest experience. By automating all these interactions, we’ve saved huge amounts of time and even removed a lot of duplicate work our teams were doing. There’s much less pressure on our check-in/out teams now.“

Marc Becker, EDV Administrator, Derag Living Hotels

Summary:

To reduce the risk of failed programmes, Living Hotels now runs tests and pilots for new systems and initiatives in trial properties before widely implementing and adopting across the business. 

As part of its feedback loop, Living Hotels interviews guests where trials are being conducted before full-scale implementation. SIHOT.GO! received positive feedback from guests leading to its subsequent roll out. 

Living Hotels is not yet finished with it’s digitalisation strategy, the future goals it has set include;

• Implementation of SIHOT.KIOSK and SIHOT.GO! in all their properties
• Introduce SIHOT.MOBILE across the business: to support hotel teams with housekeeping, maintenance and responding to guest requests, inclusive of managing breakfast and dining

In 2026, Living Hotels will open the doors to its Helsinki property – its most ambitious digitalisation project  –  a flagship state of the art hotel which will feature a lobby without a traditional reception. SIHOT will play a key role as the primary partner in achieving the project’s innovative technological objectives.