The Pad’s innovative hybrid hospitality model is powered by the Cloudbeds Platform

The Pad, located in Silverthorne, Colorado, is revolutionizing the North American hospitality market with its innovative hybrid business model, combining the best of hotels with the best of hostels. Lynne Baer, Co-founder of The Pad, said her goal was to “create the social environment and place for people to just be and be comfortable, kind of like a landing pad.”

The Pad is situated in the Rocky Mountains and is a popular destination for adventurers looking to hike, whitewater raft, mountain bike, and ski. The Pad provides a home base for like-minded travelers to “meet, do activities together, and leave with friends they didn’t know they had.”

Travelers can choose different accommodation types ranging from dorm-style bunks for the budget traveler all the way to a deluxe private for a more luxurious stay. No matter what room you’re in, you can access common amenities such as the guest kitchen, rooftop hot tub, or onsite bar.

When Lynne and her husband and Co-Founder Rob Baer first started conceptualizing and building The Pad, they knew that technology was going to play a big part in their business. As they started their search for technology solutions, Rob found that a lot of the “technology was really geared towards your more standard hotel that’s been built over the past 30 years,” but since they are such a unique property with lots of room styles, they needed something more modern and versatile.

Kevin Bowen, Direct of Operations at The Pad, has over 10 years of experience working in smaller hostels and high-end properties and utilized his expertise to help set up their technology infrastructure. He landed on Cloudbeds based on it being a cloud-based system that was able to manage multiple room types. Lynne added that she had heard great things about Cloudbeds from other hoteliers and hostel managers, and the support she received from her sales rep “really went above and beyond and made us want to partner with them.”

Kevin said that “the onboarding process with Cloudbeds was really simple and straightforward” and made the transition from starting up a new property to opening easy. Today, the majority of the team at The Pad is using Cloudbeds in some way, shape, or form, from the front desk operations to housekeeping to the bar.

Since opening, Kevin says that “we’ve seen a high rate of direct bookings – 60 to 65%,” which is significantly above the industry average. To help drive these direct bookings and support the overall guest experience, The Pad is utilizing Cloudbeds’ Channel Manager, Payments, and integrations, including their new guest engagement platform ‘Whistle for Cloudbeds.’

The Pad recently integrated with Whistle for Cloudbeds, the leading guest engagement platform:

Whistle for Cloudbeds is a big help to both our staff and guests in terms of increasing and improving communication between parties to make things more seamless.

Kevin says they are currently using an automated pre-arrival guest registration form to streamline the check-in process and are looking forward to adopting more of Whistle’s functionality.

They also just switched to Cloudbeds Payments due to some issues they faced with reconciliations with their previous provider. Since switching to Cloudbeds Payments, they’ve cut down the time of refunds and transaction adjustments.

Their Cloudbeds Channel Manager facilitates The Pad’s connections to a wide breadth of OTAs where they’ve seen impressive click-through and low cancellation rates. Kevin says:

With everything that Cloudbeds offers in terms of their packages and integrations, it’s pretty much limitless with what we can offer and provide our guests.

If he were to describe Cloudbeds to a new hotelier or lodging operator, he would say, “Cloudbeds is like if Apple made a property management system. The ease of use is super simple and straightforward for both guests and our staff. It’s very intuitive and just makes sense.”

Just 8 months into operation, The Pad is already seeing rave reviews from its guests. They currently hold a 95% review rate with over 1000 reviews. These positive reviews can be attributed to The Pad’s commitment to delivering exceptional guest experiences and being an active part of the community.

Lynne and Rob are giving back and staying true to their values by establishing The Pad as Colorado’s first pending B Corp lodging company, meaning that they’ve been recognized for balancing people, profit, and the planet as part of their business strategy. Lynne says, “there are so many things about the outside world that we can’t control, but we realized we had this opportunity to lead by example and do things better than the status quo.”

Lynne and Rob encourage other hoteliers and lodging operators to continually innovate and note that “it’s really the experience guests have while they’re at your property where you can innovate and get them excited about where they’re staying.”