Yens Steller and Patrick Ludwig are the owners and operators of Drake Bay Getaway Resort. Both are young entrepreneurs with engineering backgrounds from Seattle, Washington. They were inspired to leave these demanding jobs and follow a passionate dream, so, they set out and found a spectacular sustainable location in Yen’s home of Costa Rica and opened their own aptly named ‘Getaway’.
In only its first year of operation, Drake Bay Getaway Resort has won the 2015 Boutique Hotel Award for Beach or Coastal Hotel. A remarkable accomplishment for which its owners attribute some of the credit to Checkfront.
Given their background, Yens and Patrick both knew that selecting a booking platform would be a critical decision towards the success of their business. They conducted an exhaustive search to find the right software solution.
The key factors in selecting Checkfront were calendar visibility and the ease of accessing bookings quickly from desktop as well as mobile devices.
In signing up for Checkfront, Yens recalls his experience with the support team in helping to get him started; “I think [Checkfront’s] support team is absolutely outstanding – you can chat with them, call them, email them and the ticketing system is awesome. From the very beginning, that’s the best experience with [Checkfront]. You guys really follow through and really seem to care.”
“We are very competitive and like to do things a little bit different from most people,” Yens says of their approach to running a Resort. Bookings aren’t accepted on the website, instead, after receiving an email inquiry, phone call, or booking from another source, Checkfront is pulled up to help create the perfect vacation that meets the traveller’s specific needs. From pickup locations, to dietary restrictions, to daily activities, and even special dates like birthdays and anniversaries, a tailored package is created with incredibly detailed notes. And the mobile applications allow for dynamic changes as they interact with guests throughout their stay.
And it’s working. As Yens simply puts it, “within one year we won the award for Best Beach Hotel.”
The Boutique Hotel Awards score Hotels on customer service, lodging, food, activities, and ease of access. Yens describes Checkfront as critical to their win. “Customer service was a big aspect and people feel that we take care of them – how they arrive to the hotel, the tours they did, the time they did the tours, diets, we took care of everything all the notes and the diets, and all of that was thanks to Checkfront because that is where all of the information lives,” says Yens.
A custom vacation for the McFly’s, using notes for special requests and information.
Yens and Patrick won’t settle for getting even the smallest detail of a guest’s vacation wrong, and Checkfront has allowed them to easily stay on top of all the requests and itinerary details, to host a spectacular vacation in a breathtaking setting. To date, they haven’t received a single complaint of a detail being missed.
Congratulations Yens and Patrick, from the entire Checkfront team!
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