The Gaythering

"Why stay at a gay friendly hotel, when you can stay at a friendly gay hotel?"

Hotel Gaythering's MiMo style 1958 building is located in the heart of the Miami beach gayborhood and caters exclusively to gay guests who want to experience a local's life in Miami Beach. They have a mixture of spaces – from private rooms to shared spaces – and have been busy transforming their tech stack over the last few years.

We spoke to GM Matt Downey about the challenges of serving a niche market and how technology has helped.

Old-School Frustrations

"A couple of years ago we switched our PMS to Mews. Technology wise, we really wanted to get staff away from data entry and all the bureaucratic check-in stuff. Soon after we started browsing the revenue management options in their Marketplace. Pace Revenue (FLYR for Hospitality) jumped out from the list. We just plugged it in and it only took a few days to get up and running.

"We are a small team and training has been so easy. Learning the system and working with the Customer Success folks was so simple and we've all learnt to really trust the platform. You don't need any RM experience to use it.

"Furthermore, we used to be really focused on looking at CompSets. But we serve a niche market – the gay community – and we were really shooting ourselves in the foot by looking at comps all the time. In Miami, there is almost no direct competition in our niche. The platform has really shown us the way forward as the pricing is focused on primary demand and not CompSets."

Instant Results

"In general, our goal post-Covid was to get our ADR up and FLYR for Hospitality has helped massively. Our ADR used to be $98 before. Now it's $170.

"We actually thought that keeping a lower rate was the best strategy during the recovery…but it recommended some higher rates based on the demand data. For example, we never thought we could get higher than $99 dollars for a shared space but we sold one for over $200.

"Also – we've been able to get much higher rates around events than we ever dreamed of before. Whether it's Winter Party, Pride, Art Basel or Ultra Music Festival, we're pulling in rates much higher than before. Previously our normal rate during Art Basel would be $280 but we were selling at $380.

"Occupancy has also recovered from 80 percent at the start of last year to 97 percent."