12X growth without losing the human touch: How NOOQA scaled with Guesty

Meet NOOQA

Jan Biernetzki founded NOOQA in early 2025 with a single small apartment and a clear read on the opportunity: guests wanted well-designed, well-maintained short-term stays, and few operators were delivering that consistently. NOOQA set out to be the exception — a digital-first brand serving business travelers, couples on city trips, and families who’d take a fully equipped apartment over a hotel room any day.

The early challenge was operational, not commercial. Building reliable processes for housekeeping, maintenance, and guest communication was where the real work sat. NOOQA started on Smoobu, but as soon as the goal shifted from running one apartment to operating several professionally, the system’s limits came into focus. It could handle a single listing. It couldn’t support the scale Jan was aiming for.

The breaking point

Smoobu’s constraints all traced back to one gap: automation.

• Too many processes had to be handled manually, which was slow and error-prone
• No logic-based workflows to build on, especially for messaging sequences, task assignments, and housekeeping coordination
• Support that offered workarounds, not fixes — the core limitations stayed in place
• A platform built for basic management, not growth

The tipping point wasn’t a crisis. It was a decision. Once Jan committed to growing beyond one listing, manual workflows stopped being a nuisance and started being a ceiling — a bottleneck that would cap the business before it got going.

“Once I knew I wanted to operate more than one listing professionally, it was clear manual workflows would become a bottleneck. Scaling simply wasn’t realistic with those limitations.”

– Jan Biernetzki, Founder

Choosing Guesty: a system built to grow into

Switching at a single listing meant the migration effort came before the scale that would justify it — a real hesitation, and Jan names it. His main concern was whether every workflow would transfer cleanly.

What made the call easy was the ceiling Guesty removed. Where Smoobu topped out at basic management, Guesty was built for the operation NOOQA intended to become — automation, structured operations, and pricing that could all scale together. The onboarding and support teams sealed it.

“What stood out was the level of automation and the professional structure. The support teams were knowledgeable, responsive, and solution-driven.”

– Jan Biernetzki, Founder

“What stood out was the level of automation and the professional structure. The support teams were knowledgeable, responsive, and solution-driven.”

Jan Biernetzki, Founder

A stronger technology core

Guesty closed the automation gap that had defined the Smoobu experience. Three things changed the daily reality of the business:

• Automated communication across every channel, replacing the manual messaging that ate the most time
• Structured workflows for housekeeping and maintenance, so turnovers and tasks run on logic instead of memory
• Reliable channel synchronization, keeping listings consistent everywhere they appear

Together, these cut manual work sharply and steadied day-to-day operations — the difference between a system you fight and one that runs.

A smoother onboarding

The migration Jan worried about turned out to be the part that reassured him. Guesty’s onboarding and support teams were, in his words, knowledgeable and solution-driven — responsive enough that the workflow transfer he’d been concerned about went through without the disruption he’d braced for.

Immediate impact

The change in daily workload was noticeable straight away:

1. Far less manual messaging. Automated communication across platforms took the most repetitive task off the team’s plate.
2. Fewer errors and less friction. Structured workflows replaced the manual steps where mistakes used to creep in.
3. Clear task management for cleaning and turnovers. Housekeeping runs on assigned, trackable tasks instead of ad-hoc coordination.
4. More professional guest communication. Consistent, timely messaging raised the quality of every guest interaction.

Looking ahead

NOOQA is expanding on two fronts: more apartments and select boutique properties in new cities, backed by internal systems built to keep operations efficient as the portfolio grows. New service layers — corporate housing packages, local partnerships — are on the roadmap too.

Guesty sits at the center of that plan. For Jan, it stopped being software the moment the business started scaling on top of it.

“As we expand, Guesty becomes even more central. The more units we add, the more we rely on solid workflows, automation, and reliable support. It’s a long-term partner for scaling, not just a software tool.”

– Jan Biernetzki, Founder

NOOQA’s five-year aim is to be the obvious choice for guests who want comfort and flexibility — a dependable serviced-apartment brand with real weight across several regional markets. The system to get there is already in place.

“Scalable, reliable, professional.”

– Jan Biernetzki, Founder