Nine years to freedom. The story of how ReceptionGO was created.

Nine years ago my wife and I opened our own small hotel. We did everything ourselves. It was a real family project.

Today we have three apartments, six rooms with shared showers and a kitchen, and also a small hostel. At the same time we can host around 40 guests.

When we were only starting out, it seemed to me that the hardest part was doing a good renovation, buying the furniture, finding the first guests. But very quickly I understood that the hardest part begins afterwards.

Every day consisted of hundreds of small tasks.

Answer the messages on Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia and other booking channels.

Check the new reservations.

Update the prices.

Register the guests.

Meet the arrivals.

Check the payment.

Hand over the keys.

Answer dozens of identical questions.

Constantly switch between different programs.

I tried, I think, everything that was available.

Over those years I went through about five channel managers.

I used different guest registration systems in Slovenia.

I connected new services.

Something really helped. Something saved time. But not a single system solved the problem as a whole.

It turned out that one program was responsible for the bookings, another for the registration, a third for the payments, a fourth for the locks. And I still had to constantly switch between them and tie this whole process together by hand.

The most interesting thing is that my first “automation” looked very simple.

Before every arrival I printed a sheet with the guest’s surname, put the key inside it and hung a transparent sleeve on the reception door.

There were as many sleeves as there were arrivals expected.

That allowed us, after the cleaning, to at least sometimes leave with the family for the sea or the mountains without waiting for every guest.

Now it seems funny.

But back then that was exactly what our automation was.

And that was exactly when I understood one simple thing.

Any process that can be automated must be automated.

Not because a person is not needed.

But because a person should be doing what really requires a person.

I started drawing diagrams.

I wrote down ideas.

I reworked them again and again.

I looked at how other systems work.

I understood what they were missing.

And gradually I came to the thought that what was needed was not one more program.

What was needed was a single system that could take on practically all the work of the reception.

So that the guest goes through the registration on their own, before arrival.

Scans the documents themselves.

Receives the instructions.

Pays for the stay.

Receives the door code.

Asks questions and gets answers.

And the owner of the property steps in only when it is really necessary.

That is how the idea of ReceptionGO was gradually born.

But nine long years passed between the idea and the finished product.

In that time I completely changed the architecture of the system several times.

I changed developers.

Sometimes it seemed that we were starting again almost from scratch.

Some solutions, into which an enormous amount of effort and time had been put, had to be completely rewritten.

New government requirements appeared.

APIs changed.

New ideas appeared.

And together with them the architecture of the system changed again.

It was not easy.

But every time we came a little closer to what the system should really be.

The turning point came when my son became the lead developer of the project.

For the project this became a real afterburner.

We started moving at a completely different pace.

It became much easier for us to understand each other, to discuss ideas together, to make decisions quickly and put them into practice straight away.

Everything that used to take weeks or months now appeared significantly faster.

That was when it became clear:

we will definitely see this project through to the end.

And now, nine years later, I can finally say:

We did it.

Today the system works exactly the way I once dreamed it would.

ReceptionGO was created neither by marketers nor by programmers who have never worked in a hotel.

It was created by a person who lived the life of a guesthouse owner every day.

And then his son joined him, to turn this many years of experience into a modern system.

Today I have practically stopped dealing with the routine of the reception.

I don’t run to every guest.

I don’t sit with the phone around the clock.

I don’t worry if I have left home for a few days.

I can calmly leave for five, seven or even ten days.

And I know that the property keeps working.

But the most valuable thing is not even that.

The most valuable thing is the freedom of choice.

Now I talk to guests when I really want to.

When I have time.

When I am in a good mood.

And after all, everyone who works in hospitality knows situations like this.

You are standing on the roof fixing a leak.

Or repairing the plumbing.

Or finishing the cleaning.

And at exactly that moment the phone rings.

A new potential client.

And you understand that right now you cannot give them any attention at all.

Sometimes you don’t answer.

Sometimes you answer in a tired voice.

Sometimes irritably.

Even though the guest is not to blame at all.

I went through this too.

That is exactly why I understood that automation is not only about saving time.

It is also about the quality of communication with people.

When the routine disappears, there is strength left for the really important things.

For working on prices.

For growing the business.

For marketing.

For improving the service.

For the family.

And for talking with guests, which starts bringing pleasure again.

Today the occupancy of our guesthouse stays at around 90% practically all year round.

But at the same time I get significantly less tired than before.

Not because there is less work.

But because most of the repetitive work is now done by the system.

This is exactly what I want to share with other property owners.

I understand perfectly well what you are going through.

Because I lived through it myself.

I know what it means not to have a single free day at the height of the season.

I know what it means to wake up and fall asleep with the phone in your hands.

I know what it means to constantly run somewhere and be afraid of missing the next call or message.

That is exactly why I decided to create not just one more program.

I wanted to create a tool that would give property owners what I myself once lacked so much.

Freedom.

The freedom to manage your own time.

The freedom to calmly leave with your family.

The freedom to work on growing the business instead of endless routine.

The freedom to meet guests when you really want to, and not because everything stops without you.

ReceptionGO did not appear because someone decided to write one more program for hotels.

It appeared because one guesthouse owner very much wanted to get back his time, his freedom and the pleasure of his work.

And if my story helps even a few colleagues stop living in a state of constant stress, then these nine years were not spent in vain.