Urban boutique hotel · Ghent
758 guests in conversation, where there used to be 26
Yalo is 92 design rooms on the Brabantdam with a rooftop bar and a restaurant, built around a 24/7 city atmosphere. Automated journeys went live in February. The team didn't grow, the conversations went up twenty-nine-fold, and 88.6% of guests now rate their stay 9 or 10.
- Rooms
- 92
- Location
- Ghent, Belgium
- Live since
- 2026
- 26758
- Guests in conversation in July
- 88.6%
- Of rated stays scored 9 or 10
- 99%
- Of guest messages answered without staff
- 8s
- Median time to an answer
A 24-hour hotel with a normal-sized team
Yalo is 92 design rooms on the Brabantdam in Ghent, with a restaurant, a cocktail bar, a rooftop and six meeting rooms. The brand promises a round-the-clock, cosmopolitan hotel. The team is the size a 92-room hotel's team is.
That gap is the whole problem. A property selling a 24/7 atmosphere has guests writing at every hour, in every language, and no way to be present for all of it without hiring for it.
In February the journeys were switched on. Nobody was hired.
The same July, then and now
One month at a 92-room boutique hotel, before and after the journeys.
Across the month
Before February
26 guests ended up in a conversation with the hotel. The rest arrived, stayed and left without one.
Now
758 did. Same team, same headcount, twenty-nine times the contact.
Any hour, any language
Before February
A message at midnight in German waits for somebody who can answer it in German.
Now
Answered in eight seconds, across 24 languages. English, Dutch, German and French cover most of it; the tail covers the rest.
The day before checkout
Before February
Whether a stay went well is something you find out from the review, once it's public.
Now
Every guest is asked while there's still time to act. 757 have answered since May.
After checkout
Before February
The happy guests leave quietly, and the unhappy ones write it up.
Now
88.6% of rated stays come back 9 or 10, and the happy ones get asked to say so where it counts.
What they switched on
Journeys and replies together, then the post-stay feedback flow - which Yalo now uses more heavily than anyone.
- Discovery
- Booking (this part)
- Pre-arrival (this part)
- In-stay (this part)
- Post-stay (this part)
The numbers, in full
| The result | What it is | What's behind it |
|---|---|---|
| 26758 | Guests in conversation in July | Against 26 in the same month before automated journeys were switched on. The team is the same size it was. |
| 88.6% | Of rated stays scored 9 or 10 | 671 of 757 responses to the post-stay feedback flow since May. Another 10.3% scored 6 to 8, and 1.1% scored 5 or below. |
| 99% | Of guest messages answered without staff | 2,490 of 2,512 messages over 90 days. When a person does step in, the median reply takes 42 minutes - which is what the automation is standing in for. |
| 8s | Median time to an answer | 90th percentile 16 seconds. Sentiment across every inbound message averages +2.62 on a -10 to +10 scale, the strongest of the three properties. |
- 26758
Guests in conversation in July
Against 26 in the same month before automated journeys were switched on. The team is the same size it was.
- 88.6%
Of rated stays scored 9 or 10
671 of 757 responses to the post-stay feedback flow since May. Another 10.3% scored 6 to 8, and 1.1% scored 5 or below.
- 99%
Of guest messages answered without staff
2,490 of 2,512 messages over 90 days. When a person does step in, the median reply takes 42 minutes - which is what the automation is standing in for.
- 8s
Median time to an answer
90th percentile 16 seconds. Sentiment across every inbound message averages +2.62 on a -10 to +10 scale, the strongest of the three properties.
Sounds like your hotel?
- 60 to 120 rooms, design-led, with a bar or restaurant of its own
- A brand that promises to be there at any hour, and a team that can't be
- City guests arriving from a dozen countries in the same week
- Reviews that matter enough that you'd rather hear it before they're public
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Yalo is 92 design rooms on the Brabantdam with a rooftop bar and a restaurant, built around a 24/7 city atmosphere. Automated journeys went live in February. The team didn't grow, the conversations went up twenty-nine-fold, and 88.6% of guests now rate their stay 9 or 10.