Aparthotel management in Batumi: room stock and sales channels

A pool of apartments or a room stock: two ways of working

We run aparthotel management in Batumi under one of two schemes, and the choice has to be made before the contract is signed. In a pool you have two, three or ten apartments in one building. Each one is let short-term as a separate apartment, but with a shared stock of linen, one cleaning team and one report. The commission is lower than for a single apartment, and cleaning and laundry are charged as each unit's expenses.

Under the operator scheme we take on the whole room stock: sales and pricing, check-in, cleaning to a standard and minor repairs in the rooms. You receive your share of the income, and cleaning and minor repairs are already paid for out of the operator's share. This is the usual arrangement for a building or a floor converted into rooms, and for aparthotel complexes where the apartments belong to different owners.

If there are two apartments and they are in different buildings, they can't be turned into a room stock: that is ordinary management of two apartments under one contract.

Room categories and sales channels

A guest doesn't choose apartment 1407, they choose a room type: a studio with a sea view, a 1+1 facing the courtyard, a family room with two bedrooms. So at launch we divide the stock into categories in such a way that the rooms in one category differ neither in floor area, nor in the view, nor in the appliances. If one studio in a category turns out to have no balcony, the guest who ends up in it will write about it in a review that the whole category shares.

On Booking, rooms of one type are sold as a single category, with the number of units shown. On Airbnb each apartment more often has its own listing. We bring all the channels into booking management software, and a room that has been sold is closed everywhere at once. Calendar sync by link is not enough for a room stock: with ten or so rooms, a sync delay in the season turns into two guests for one room.

Prices for the stock are calculated by category and by the occupancy of the whole building, not apartment by apartment. How we change rates by season and day of the week is described on the page about seasonal pricing.

The room standard and checking the cleaning

In an aparthotel a room is compared with the photos and with the neighbouring room of the same category, because the reviews are shared by the whole category. We set out the room standard in an annex to the contract: furniture and appliances from a list, crockery, linen and towels, consumables, and where everything goes. Replacements follow this list, so a kettle that breaks a year later is replaced with the same model, not with whatever the shop happened to have.

Cleaning follows the category checklist and ends with photos taken from the same points as in the standard. After cleaning, some of the rooms are checked by the head of housekeeping, who opens the wardrobes, looks at the floor drain and the grout and counts the towels. A room with faults is not let until they have been put right. The general procedure for cleaning between guests is described on the page about cleaning between stays, and we work out the linen stock and laundry for the whole stock as described on the page about linen and laundry.

Building rules and the contract with the developer

Some aparthotel complexes in Batumi were built together with the developer's own hotel management service. The purchase documents and the building rules of such complexes sometimes include an obligation to let the unit only through that service, or to keep to its standard of finishes and furniture. So our partner lawyer reads your contract with the developer before we take the unit into the stock.

At the same time we look at the Public Registry extract: it shows the designated use of the premises, whether residential or hotel. Taxes can depend on this, and a unit that operates as part of a hotel business may be taxed as non-residential property when it is sold. This is a question for a tax adviser before launch, and the general rules are collected on the page about rental income tax.

The building rules also shape the daily work: where guests are registered, how lift and parking cards are issued, at what times linen can be moved, and whether reception works at night. In a building converted entirely into rooms, the owner writes the rules, and we propose them with cleaning and check-ins in mind. If the rooms first need to be brought to one look, the renovation is done in blocks, as on the page about hotel room renovation.

A report for every unit

The report comes once a month, but for a room stock it has two levels. At the top is the total for the whole stock: nights sold, income by category, platform commissions and shared expenses. Below it is a line for each unit: bookings with dates and amounts, the unit's expenses with receipts, its share of the shared expenses and the amount due to its owner.

When the units belong to different owners, we agree two rules before launch. The first is how shared expenses are split, such as the booking software subscription, the cleaning equipment and the laundry. They are divided in proportion to nights sold or equally between the units, and the chosen option is written into the contract.

The second is how bookings are distributed between identical units. The software puts a guest into a free unit of the category, and we make sure that over the season the nights are spread evenly between the units, and show this in the report. There is also the common pot option: the category's income is divided by shares, and then it doesn't matter which unit the guest stayed in.

Winter: closing some of the rooms

The tourist season in Batumi runs from July to September, and in winter a stock of twenty rooms usually doesn't need all twenty. A room that sells once a week still needs heating, cleaning before each guest and airing, so for the colder months we close some of the rooms and concentrate the bookings in the rest.

Which rooms to close and how to split the income while they are closed is decided before the season and written into the contract, otherwise a dispute with the owners of the closed rooms is inevitable. Closed rooms are aired and dehumidified on a schedule, and winter is a good time for minor repairs and for replacing worn textiles. Some rooms can be let for 1–3 months to people who have come to Batumi to live for a while.

How much aparthotel management costs in Batumi

The operator's share for managing a room stock is 42–48% of income after platform commissions. It covers sales and pricing, check-in, cleaning to a standard, minor repairs in the rooms and a report for every unit. A pool of 2–3 or more apartments in one building works differently: the commission is 21–24%, and cleaning and laundry are paid as the units' expenses. For comparison, short-term management of a single apartment costs 30–36% of income.

Launching a room stock is a one-off payment of 3,600–5,400 ₾: room standards, setting up the booking management software and listings by category. For a pool, creating the listings is enough, at 360–540 ₾. In a pool, laundry and tradesman call-outs are charged as the units' expenses, and their prices are collected in the table on this page. In both schemes, room renovation and replacing equipment are paid for to an agreed estimate.

The share depends on the number of rooms and categories, how spread out the rooms are across floors and blocks, whether there is a night reception and how far the rooms have already been brought to one standard. We fix the final cost in the contract after inspecting the rooms and the building rules.