Developed by HostAStay, HostPlatform was launched at the inaugural Short Stay Summit 2019 – a power-packed event organised with a mission to empower the short-stay industry.

HostPlatform is a centralised short-stay management platform engineered to ease operations.

Held at Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa, the Summit hosted more than 400 participants and was officiated by Yang Berbahagia Dato’ Ng Wan Peng, Chief Operating Officer of MDEC who also launched HostPlatform.

The travel landscape has evolved substantially since the entry of Airbnb in 2008 which popularised the short-stay model.

In just one decade, the short-stay industry has opened up new revenue streams for enterprising individuals, attracted property investors and created new jobs such as ‘hosts’.

In fact, the sharing economy in Malaysia is estimated to be worth between US$10 to US$14 billion by 2025, creating 1.2 million jobs.

As the short-stay model continues to boom, large online travel agencies (OTA’s) such as Agoda, and Booking.com which traditionally only featured hotels, are now listing short-stay properties.

Professional hosts have emerged to replace the traditional ‘front desk’, and short-stay management companies (usually consisting of several hosts) have erupted onto the scene to support the ever increasing number of short-stay units.

Being an enterprising individual himself, Founder and CEO of HostAStay, Jordan Oon recalls that it wasn’t easy in the initial stage to even find a host.

He said,

“I knew the short-stay model was lucrative, and I bought a property to start listing, but I could not find a professional host!

“This is why we created HostAStay – a simple search tool to find hosts in the area of your unit.”

Perhaps handling one or two units is simple enough, but to convert from being a part time host into a full time career requires handling many more units, and maintaining high occupancy.

This leads to the placement of units across multiple OTA’s, managing the bookings and reporting financial results to the owners of each unit. With higher volume, more information to aggregate, and more stakeholders, several issues arise including double booking and payout transparency.

This is where HostPlatform comes in. Seamless asset management and higher profit margins are no longer a dream, and venturing into short stay businesses has never been easier by integrating technology into the equation.

HostPlatform is a subscription based short-stay management platform featuring three main powerful tools:

1. HostConnect

HostConnect is a Centralised Reservation System equipped with a direct Application Programming Integration (API) that integrates with the world’s top 5 online booking sites – Airbnb, Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia and Ctrip.

Hosts gain full control of their online inventory in one interface, ensuring double bookings do not occur as unit availability is updated in real time across all booking sites.

In addition, its Pricing Synchronisation feature also allows hosts to modify their unit rates with full visibility of their listings across multiple bookings sites with just a few taps.

2. HostManage

HostManage enables hosts to manage multiple short-stay reservations at their own convenience. With its built-in Multi-Calendar View, hosts can browse through all bookings and arrange schedules easily.

The tool comes with an Internal Booking Engine that synchronises offline with online bookings, and ensures zero overlaps within the same unit.

In addition, hosts can better plan for their future promotions with the Monthly Performance Analysis that generates performance charts of every registered unit.

3. D.O.R.A

With D.O.R.A, the Dedicated Owner Revenue System, hosts will no longer need to worry about generating payout reports manually.

The revenue system will automatically generate reports for all registered units, clearly listing breakdown of revenue, operational expenditure and payout. Respective homeowners can easily gain access to the monthly payout of the units that are linked to them, having transparent reports right at their finger tips.

Jayden Lee, General Manager of HostPlatform, commented,

“We strive to be synonymous with ‘responsible tourism’.

“The human touch cannot be replaced when checking someone in, and hosts should be focused on providing the best hospitality experience possible.

“HostPlatform allows them to do just that by eliminating tedious tasks.”

The subscription plan also comes with HostProtect, a protection plan underwritten by Tune Protect Malaysia. Homeowners enjoy peace of mind with a policy that protects them against any loss or damage to the contents in their properties of up to RM 30,000 per unit.

The plan also covers their legal liability to guests and third parties in an event of an accident caused by or through their own negligence of up to RM50,000.

HostPlatform is available at www.hostplatform.com.