bnbme Holiday Homes specialises in luxury. Owners of luxury homes in Dubai trust the company to rent out their spaces to travellers on a short-term basis and create a wow experience for every guest. Vinayak Mahtani, CEO of bnbme Holiday Homes, has successfully led the company to new heights by leveraging his expertise in operations management, strategic planning and customer service. He spoke to Intelligent SME.tech about how bnbme uses a powerful technology platform to streamline processes and enable scalable growth. The business has used multiple industry software, and, with its own tech team and open APIs, has been able to create a system which speaks to each other and gives the best of all worlds.
bnbme Holiday Homes specialises in luxury. Owners of luxury homes in Dubai trust the company to rent out their spaces to travellers on a short-term basis and create a wow experience for every guest. Vinayak Mahtani, CEO of bnbme Holiday Homes, has successfully led the company to new heights by leveraging his expertise in operations management, strategic planning and customer service. He spoke to Intelligent SME.tech about how bnbme uses a powerful technology platform to streamline processes and enable scalable growth. The business has used multiple industry software, and, with its own tech team and open APIs, has been able to create a system which speaks to each other and gives the best of all worlds.
Tell me more about bnbme Holiday Homes and how it started.
Bnbme was started by myself and my wife, Shilpa. We had an apartment on Palm Island [in Dubai] and got badly treated by the long-term tenant. This is not unusual in this market. The tenant left the apartment in a very poor condition and left right at the start of summer with Ramadan set to follow. We decided to put it on the short-term market in 2014. In 2015 we made double of what our long-term rent was.
We added our personal portfolio of properties to the short-term lets and that made my wife very busy, with managing the operations, along with the house staff. Over time, friends asked if we could manage theirs and then it just grew from there. When we realised the value in our offering, we started to make a business out of it. We never really thought of it from the perspective of how much money it can make but rather wow, we can disrupt traditional accommodation here. And that’s what we aim to do.
What gap in the market did you see?
The competition does not want to provide a complete luxury experience to the guest. Many of them don’t come from a hospitality background – it takes a special type of person to please others as a passion. Every day we want to create wow experiences for every guest that stays with us.
How have you used technology to scale-up your operations?
In multiple ways. We have used revenue management, where we have an algorithm which is based on specific measures to predict the demand and then adjusts the price accordingly. We also use a lot of AI in our guest communication with Machine Learning (ML). This is able to predict the kind of property that the guest is looking for, making it easier for the guest to choose and the ML is able to use our bot to instantly answer guests’ requests and questions.
Is this your own technology which you have developed or is it provided by someone else?
It’s a combination of both. Sometimes we take bits of an existing technology and then develop plugins for it to make it suit our needs. For example, we use a rate shopper which tells us how the market is doing – on top of this we have built our own compset and forecast analysis to see how specific properties or competitors are doing.
What is the main technology you use for day-to-day operations?
I can’t say there is main technology we use. Our entire business, from the homeowner acquisition to sales to finance and accounting and all the operations, is based around different tech. We try to minimise manual processes as much as we can. We are constantly looking at processes and anything that is repetitive, or just requires hands to do, we try and automate. We recently automated our entire recruitment process; CVs are still looked at and interviews held, but everything else is automated.
How have you developed your in-house technology?
We have a CTO based out of London who spends time with our different teams to understand the challenges we face. From there, we look at what tools or processes can be simplified or sped up and remove any margin for error. We then go and build.
We have four people in our tech team and ISE coders as and when we need them on a part time basis.
Does this save costs overall – i.e., building your own tech rather than buying it in?
The thought process behind the use of technology is multifold – increase speed, reduce errors, improve efficiency and, in the long-run, reduce costs. But just a focus on cost should not be the reason behind what technology to use. I’m not a big fan of building your own tech if it’s a product everyone is using. What you should focus on is layers on top of the tech to improve and speed up your processes.
Tell me more about your custom-built algorithm.
It’s been running for several years now – we are pretty well connected when it comes to hotels – we want to now start adding demand from flights and regions, so we know which markets are going to be busy in Dubai. Based on this, we can then start to market to those countries when we start seeing occupancy on the flights filling up.
What plans do you have for developing your technology?
I can’t disclose our future tech plans, but what I can say is the next 18 months is going to be very exciting. We are developing a homeowner app which is going to be the best in class. We have been working on this for the past six months. I hope it will be ready to launch before the end of the year.
Tell me more about your career.
I co-founded bnbme in Dubai with my wife in 2018 after letting out one of our own properties and realising the higher return on short-term lets than long-term lets. In six years, we’ve grown the business to a team of over 70 people, managing 150 luxury properties across Dubai and India. We partner with property owners who want to let out their homes for short-term rentals. Bnbme manages guests’ stays and provides hotel-style services with comforts of a home.
Entrepreneurship is in my blood. My family ran their own businesses, and I started my own company in my teens – a footwear-buying agency in India and sold it six years later.
I’m an experienced CEO, skilled in negotiation, sales management, budgeting etc. with expertise in all areas of food and beverage, property and hotel management. I am passionate about helping other ambitious young entrepreneurs and gladly spend time mentoring aspiring business talent.
What are your top tips for entrepreneurs starting their own business?
1) Make sure you have thought of the capital needed in the worst case scenario and have it pre-arranged. Remember, when it rains, it rains, and then trying to arrange capital comes at a much higher cost and is not always available.
2) You don’t always have to have an explanation about your business or all the answers upfront – in your gut, if you see the problem you are solving and you can monetise it, then go with it, and go with it all in. Everyone will ask questions like, why has no one else thought of it, or if it was that good of an idea, someone else would have done it; those are the kind of people you should not discuss business ideas with. They are never going to start their own business.
3) Be ready to invest all your time and make major life sacrifices to succeed. You are going to have to work day in day out every day of the week. When you finish a dinner party, you need to be ready to come back up and start working again. There is no time off until you succeed. There is no such thing as work/life balance or time off – you don’t have the luxury of burnout! You need to be ready to go all in.
What’s the best career advice you have been given?
Remove the words would, could and should from your dictionary. If you believe in it, just do it.
What’s next for bnbme Holiday Homes?
We want to continue growing in the market and be a leader in holiday homes by offering guests wow experiences.
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