Serviced-Apartment Bookings from Six Channels, Turned into Staff Tasks Automatically
A serviced-apartment operator in Hanoi rents furnished apartments by the night and by the month to expats and business travelers. Bunbu built its booking website, operations back office and mobile-app API: bookings from six channels land in one system and automatically become check-in, registration and cleaning tasks for the right staff.
Serviced apartments run like a hotel, without a hotel's systems
The client rents out apartments spread across residential towers in Hanoi to expat professionals, business travelers and tourists. Every booking sets off a chain of work for several different people, while the information lives in many places.
Bookings from many channels, each in its own place
Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Expedia each have their own extranet, and direct bookings through the sales team went into Excel. To know which apartment was free on which date, staff had to open several screens and cross-check them by hand, which made double bookings and missed bookings easy.
Tasks handed out by message
After every booking, a manager had to message whoever handled check-in, cleaning and airport pickup by chat app or phone, then remember what was done.
Paperwork for foreign guests
Foreign guests must be registered for temporary residence. It is mandatory and easy to forget as guest numbers grow.
Layered pricing
Nightly, seasonal and monthly rates, 3-, 6- and 12-month terms, long-stay discounts, coupon codes, and two currencies: USD and VND.
No view of occupancy
Revenue and occupancy per apartment and per building only existed after manual Excel roll-ups, and owners had to ask to find out.
How day-to-day work changed
Bookings
One extranet per OTA; direct bookings in Excel.
→Bookings from 6 channels in one shared calendar per apartment. Website bookings hold the apartment while the guest pays.
Pricing
Nightly and monthly prices and discounts worked out by hand.
→Automatic pricing: nightly and seasonal rates, monthly rates with a deposit from 28 nights, long-stay discounts, coupons, USD/VND.
Payment
Waiting for bank transfers or cash, tracking who still owed money.
→Guests pay online through OnePay (domestic ATM cards and Visa/Mastercard/JCB/Amex). Unpaid bookings automatically create a collection task for accounting.
Assigning work
Messaging and calling each person after every booking.
→Every booking creates its own check-in, residence registration, check-out and cleaning tasks, sent to the staff responsible for that area via Telegram and in-app notifications.
Guest communication
Messages scattered across apps, hard to hand over between shifts.
→Each booking has its own chat room between the guest and staff, right in the app.
Reporting
Excel roll-ups at month-end.
→Revenue, commissions and occupancy per apartment and per building, recalculated every night for this month and the next two. Owners see the figures for their own units.
One booking, the whole stay scheduled in advance
At the heart of the system, every booking becomes a sequence of concrete tasks, each with an owner and a due date. Nobody has to remember, and nobody has to send messages.
What happens automatically once a booking is confirmed
- BookingOnline payment, confirmation emailTelegram alert to the area teamPayment collection (if unpaid)
- Before arrivalGuest ↔ staff chat roomBuilding check-in guide
- ArrivalCheck-inTemporary residence registration
- During the stayCleaning and laundry packagesAirport pickup and tours
- DepartureCheck-outMove-out cleaning1st review reminder
- +7 and +13 days2nd and 3rd review reminders
Guest self-service on web/appTask assigned to staff automatically
Guests and affiliates
Expats, business travelers, tourists- Search by dates, area, bedrooms, nightly/monthly price, building facilities, or an area on the map
- Photos, floor plans, 3D tours, reviews, cancellation policy
- Sign in with Facebook/Google, book and pay right away
- Chat with staff, add services, report a problem with the apartment
- Affiliates get a referral code and track their commissions
Office
Sales, customer service, accounting, managers- Enter bookings from OTAs and sales, linked to OTA accounts to track commissions
- A "guest journey" calendar showing every task for each apartment
- Manage apartments, seasonal and term pricing, coupons, service packages
- Accounting confirms collections, pays affiliate commissions, exports CSV
- An activity log showing who changed what
Field staff
Housekeeping, airport pickup, maintenance- See only their assigned tasks, in their own area
- Get notified via Telegram and the app, mark tasks done when finished
- Work in Vietnamese while guests use English
Owners and management
Apartment owners, company leadership- Revenue and occupancy per apartment and per building, updated nightly
- Owners see only the figures and bookings for their own units
- Several companies and areas managed on the same system
From an operations system to a partnership of many years
Operations core
Apartments, multi-channel bookings, automatic task assignment, Telegram alerts by area, OnePay payment, revenue reports.
More services, more sales channels
Multiple companies, airport pickup and tours, cleaning/laundry packages, an affiliate program, long-term rentals with deposits, an app API with chat and push.
Stable operation
Operational support and adjustments as the business evolved.
Infrastructure upgrade
Moved from AWS to a dedicated server, added full multilingual character support, fixed photo uploads. Still running after 7 years.
What the client gets beyond the software
We design from real operations
We start from the work of housekeepers, check-in staff and accountants, not just the booking screen.
We know the local market
Temporary residence registration for foreigners, a domestic payment gateway, two currencies, international OTAs.
Fast to launch
The operations core was done in the first 5 months, then extended with each new business need.
One backend for web and app
The website, back office and mobile app share the same data and the same pricing logic.
A long-term partner
Seven years on, we came back to move the infrastructure and keep the system running smoothly.
Mainstream tech, easy to take over
Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Redis/Sidekiq, AWS S3, and API documentation generated from the tests.
Businesses facing a similar challenge
This solution suits operators who manage many rental units, take bookings from several channels and need to coordinate on-site teams.
Still coordinating bookings with Excel and chat groups?
Our first conversation focuses on how you operate today, not a software demo. Afterwards, you receive:
- A map of your current process, from booking to check-out
- A list of tasks that can be automated, ranked by impact
- A proposed phase-1 scope and expansion roadmap