GauVendi for apaleo: More Than a Booking Engine — Feature-Based Selling on the apaleo Store

apaleo was built as an open platform with the expectation that hotels would choose their own booking engine. GauVendi is the one apaleo properties choose when their units genuinely differ and they want to sell that difference — balcony, floor, view, bed configuration, quiet location — rather than collapsing it into unit groups. It is listed on the apaleo Store under two categories: Booking engines and Central reservation systems.

What stays, what changes

apaleo stays. It remains the system of record for reservations, guests, folios and operations. GauVendi does not replace apaleo.

The direct channel changes. GauVendi's Sales Engine replaces the booking engine on your website. It reads units, availability and rates from apaleo, presents each unit's actual features as sellable products, and writes confirmed reservations back into apaleo assigned to the right physical unit.

Distribution is modular. OTAs continue to receive your unit groups through your existing channel manager. Feature-based products can be reserved for the direct channel. If you want channel-differentiated distribution, GauVendi's Flexi-Channel connects to the channel manager and positions different products per channel.

The modules on the apaleo Store

GauVendi is modular, and the apaleo Store listing shows the modules an apaleo property typically takes: the Sales Engine as the direct booking engine with Sales Pro Plus for personalised proposals and telephone reservations, Inventi-Flow for automated unit assignment, Flexi-Channel for channel-differentiated distribution, and the platform itself. Module pricing is shown on the listing; the figures there and on our pricing page are indicative, and the actual price is quoted individually.

What an apaleo property can sell that unit groups cannot

A unit group is a container. GauVendi opens it and sells what is inside: balcony or terrace, floor, view, bed configuration, bathtub or walk-in shower, quiet courtyard or street side, workspace, connecting door. One physical unit becomes several products, each with its own price, each matched to the guest who values it. Two connecting units can be sold as one "Family Suite" product on any channel. Guests who lock what they love pay a premium. Guests who let the hotel choose pay less.

This is how feature-based retailing went live at Cardrona Terraces, backed by GauVendi and apaleo together.

Setup and cost

Connect from the apaleo Store; typical go-live is about three days, without an IT project. What you supply is reasonably accurate unit-level data in apaleo. Pricing is a monthly subscription per property with no booking commission — indicatively a platform fee from EUR 100 per month plus roughly EUR 3 to 6 per bookable unit per month depending on modules, with a minimum around EUR 200. See Pricing.

Questions apaleo properties ask

Does GauVendi replace apaleo? No. apaleo remains the PMS. GauVendi replaces the booking engine and the CRS on top — and is more than either: it creates the products, prices them and assigns the rooms.

Can I keep my channel manager? Yes. OTAs continue to receive unit groups as today. Flexi-Channel is optional, with SiteMinder as the default integration and others possible.

Does it work with my revenue management system? Yes. GauVendi consumes the price levels your RMS writes to apaleo and derives feature-based product prices from them. It does not replace the RMS.

Is this attribute-based selling? It is the mechanism, taken further. Attribute-based selling describes the ingredients. GauVendi turns them into named, priced products and assigns the physical unit automatically at the moment of booking.

Recorded results at apaleo properties

Three of the apaleo properties selling with GauVendi have published their results, normalised to 100 direct online bookings so that any hotel can compare:

• 49-unit country hotel with rooms and holiday houses — 10 categories, 81 ways to sell them; 76 of 100 bookings individualised, 46 above category; around €49 more per direct online booking, with additional services out-earning the room premium.

• 69-unit city apartment hotel — 11 categories, 44 ways to sell them; 52 of 100 bookings individualised, 23 above category; around €9 more per booking. Guests chose the courtyard side.

• 58-unit city business hotel — 5 categories, 26 ways to sell them; 78 of 100 bookings individualised, 19 above category; around €7 more per booking.

Explore property results: Property results: Dynamic Inventory in action.

Book an initial call and we will walk through your apaleo setup and what your specific inventory could sell as.

The figures in the individual examples describe the featured properties. Separately, GauVendi reports an average revenue uplift of 20% per property and a 7.7% look-to-book conversion rate across its portfolio. These portfolio figures are not calculated from the selected examples on this page.