How The Penthouse Sky Apartments grew revenue 10x with a fully automated guest journey

Meet Penthouse Sky Apartments

The Penthouse Sky Apartments started with a party problem. In 2011, Elwin Giel ran a restaurant on the 42nd floor of a high-rise in The Hague. The parties drew regular noise complaints from tenants on the floors below, so the building’s owner, a social housing company, decided to relocate them.

Around the same time, Airbnb was taking off, and Giel had already rented out a spare room in his own home on the platform. He offered to lease the empty apartments at half price. Every listing he posted filled up almost immediately. And unlike the old tenants, the new guests didn’t complain about the parties. They joined them.

“I ended up renting all the empty apartments in the building and we became the biggest Airbnb of The Hague.”

Elwin Giel, Business Owner

The apartments were later grouped onto four floors, and the business officially became a hotel. Today, The Penthouse Sky Apartments runs 12 studios and 8 XL apartments on floors 29, 30, 38, and 39. Because the surrounding area is mostly low-rise, the views stretch up to 45 kilometers, all the way to the sea and Rotterdam. Guests include tourists, business travelers, and people who need temporary housing during a move or home renovation, with stays from one night to a full year.

The challenge of managing 20 apartments across channels by hand

As the business grew from one apartment to 20, Giel managed every reservation manually across several platforms. He needed a multi-calendar system that could handle all 20 units across multiple channels at once.

Finding one was harder than expected. The business didn’t fit neatly into either category: it was too spread out to run like a hotel and too concentrated to run like a typical vacation rental company. And at the time, almost no property management system could connect to Airbnb.

“Before Guesty, we were managing reservations manually on different platforms, which was becoming impossible.”

Elwin Giel, Business Owner

Why The Penthouse Sky Apartments chose Guesty

Guesty was Giel’s first property management system, so he spent a lot of time researching before he committed. Three things decided it: the direct Airbnb connection, a clear design that was easy to work in, and a young company whose ambitions matched his own.

The early relationship was hands-on. Regular meetings and calls with the Guesty team gave Giel personal support and a chance to shape where the product went next.

“We grew with the system and the system grew with us.”

Elwin Giel, Business Owner

The results of a fully automated guest journey

Guesty let The Penthouse Sky Apartments sell on multiple channels at once from day one, while cutting the manual work behind reservations and guest communication. The open API, backed by high-quality support, then became the foundation for automating the full guest journey.

• Grew revenue 10x: Annual revenue went from under €100K to more than €1M over almost a decade.
• Kept occupancy above 90%: Distribution expanded from Airbnb alone to Booking.com, Expedia, and a direct booking website, which keeps the apartments full in most periods.
• Saved 40+ hours a week: Automated messaging, pricing, and reservation management took over work that used to be done by hand.
• Cut response times from a day to minutes: Automated guest messaging gives guests the near-instant answers they now expect.
• Saved €100K a year on staffing: Labor costs for the apartments have dropped almost 100%. The restaurant and hotel group once employed 65 people. Today, the hotel runs with one part-time staff member.

“The other main benefit for us is the open API, with high-quality support, enabling us to create the fully automated guest journey that we offer guests today.”

Elwin Giel, Business Owner

How The Penthouse Sky Apartments runs day to day

Every stage of the guest journey runs automatically. Reservations come in from Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and the direct website, and all of them sync to one calendar. Dynamic pricing adjusts rates across channels, and automated guest messaging handles communication in multiple languages, from booking confirmation to checkout. Through the open API, Giel connected the systems that manage security deposits and electronic keys, so guests can check in without anyone on site.

As Guesty added features over the years, the platform got more complex. Guesty’s AI agents have made it simpler to use again. Dedicated account managers have also brought back the one-to-one support Giel valued from the early days.

“For us the combination of the reliability of Guesty and the full integration with Guesty Services and the possibility to fully integrate using the open API, means that we are not even looking at alternatives. As far as we are concerned, this is the complete package, almost tweaked to perfection.”

Elwin Giel, Business Owner

Looking ahead to an AI-driven operation

Within five years, Giel expects the business to be fully automated and AI-driven, with almost no staff on site. He already shares his automation playbook with other operators who want to learn from it. As floors in the building become available, there may also be room to grow without leaving the address that makes the business unique.

“We see a full integration of AI into the business model in the coming years and for Guesty to become our software partner that can fully manage the operation (almost) without our input.”

Elwin Giel, Business Owner

Asked to describe Guesty in three words, Giel didn’t hesitate: efficient, reliable, and very complete.

Featured tools 

Channel manager | Multi-calendar | Automated guest messaging | Dynamic pricing | Open API | AI agents