What happened in the past 3 months at GuestJoy?
We are constantly working on providing the best possible service for our partners. Besides the usual ticketing, training and support in the office we also had time to present at various conferences and sign some wonderful deals all over Europe. Our focus was on our two new offices, Prague and Belgrade; the UAE market; and to update the entire GJ platform providing our partners with a slightly different platform. So what exactly did we do? This is our report for you, read on if you are interested in our new interface, new customers and our adventures conferences in Dublin, Helsinki, and Kyiv.
Welcome the new team members of GuestJoy; Nikita, Flora & Rene
We improved the GuestJoy platform.
There is a new and improved version of us coming! For our current partners; don’t worry, our IT team is from Estonia, one of the most digitally advanced societies so most of the changes we’ve made are “under the hood”. We’ve updated the back-end code to allow us to start adding great new features from now on. We have enhanced pre, during and post-stay guest communication. This means that our partners are now able to create and format an unlimited amount of messages with which they can reach their guests at any time before and during their stay. Our integration team has launched Mefisto this month and we have 4 new integrations on the way. Stay tuned if you’d like to know more about them.
We opened new offices and the family grew.
We have entered some new markets and started cooperating with hotels in all the countries of the Balkan region. This is all thanks to one of our newest team members, Milos, who is the heads up our Serbian office. Since we are growing rapidly in Central Europe we decided to open a Prague office too. With these improvements, we speak more than 11 languages at GuestJoy and are present in more than 26 countries from Asia to Europe. We grew tremendously in Iceland, bringing the entire Fosshotel chain online, as well as the iconic Hotel Ranga. But we managed to cover even more of Estonia by having the great jewel Hotell Palace as our customer now. All in all, we signed 50 new deals, but this is no reason for us to just sit back and relax; we will continue with the same energy next quarter!
We networked, shared knowledge and cooperated with other companies in various markets.
Over the last three months, we were present in all four corners of Europe. From Finland to Montenegro to Ireland, we were everywhere. Firstly we learned about what sells hotel rooms today in Helsinki with D-EDGE and followed them to Ireland. In Cork, we extolled the benefits of advanced upsell techniques at a conference, and subsequently met with potential customers; many of whom converted. Then we headed to the Balkans, to the beautiful Montenegro where we presented at the Future Tourism Conference. Last but not least, we hosted our own event in Tallinn.
We met with startups
Here at GuestJoy, we love technology, creativity, and new ideas. That is why we work with so many startups and have confidence in these cooperations. Firstly we co-hosted an event with Netaffinity and Bolt (formerly Taxify), where we discussed booking behavior, and the future of transportation. During this session, we had time to personally address some of our customers’ questions and gave advice on how to take upselling to the next level. We had visiting teams from Pipedrive and HotelTime and had a valuable brainstorming session about sales and how to get the most out of Pipedrive’s features. Lastly, in the Nordic market, the integration team GoDo completed our much-anticipated integration, allowing us to bring GuestJoy to even more Icelandic customers.
Most-read blog articles
Our most-read articles were the ones where we shared knowledge of sales and then on technology. We wrote about the pros and cons of getting your own hotel app, and provided some valuable insight into travel personas and how to target them in your GuestJoy platform. While it did not make it to the top, we also featured our most environmentally friendly partners and gave tips on how to make a hotel greener. Lastly, we had a couple of interviews with companies we work with and trust in – stay tuned to read about them all! Read the first one about the trends and challenges of the hospitality industry here.
Teambuilding in Kyiv
And last but not least our amazing team went to Kyiv for teambuilding. The ultimate goal was to get to know each other and brainstorm about the future of GuestJoy, but we also had time to explore the city, drink, eat and relax on the beaches of the Dnieper. Our wonderful guide taught us a lot about life in Ukraine and showed us a hidden speakeasy we otherwise would not have seen. Kyiv is a city that has a lot to offer and we came back to Estonia very inspired, full of new ideas and energy.