living TIMELESS
Individual properties became a professional operation.
We built living TIMELESS together with my wife. At first alongside other work, from the standard of offering only accommodation we would book ourselves.
Starting point
Begun alongside other work.
Building it up began alongside my other work. At first we ran the operation as a GbR, a German civil-law partnership. With every further property, the operational responsibility grew.
Up to around 14 properties, this still ran alongside the work at the time. A large portfolio was not the plan. The scale came out of practice.
Building it up
Not every property stayed.
We deliberately let individual properties go. In this phase it became clearer which locations and partnerships would hold up, and which standard of quality living TIMELESS should stand for.
We did much of it ourselves and developed the first processes where the operation needed them.
Professionalisation
From a sideline into self-employment.
Then the decision to stop building it alongside other work. Through contact with an investor came the first larger project, with 22 apartments.
With that, the task shifted. Renting became organisation, and individual routines became processes.
Growth
More than 50 units, several locations.
Further projects followed. The focus shifted to locations with several units. In this phase living TIMELESS grew to more than 50 units.
The units at Erlenbad are not included in this figure. They are a development of their own.
Growth is not automatically scaling.
More units alone do not yet create a professional operation. Only structures, processes, systems, responsibilities and commercial control make growth manageable.
We have experienced for ourselves what happens when an operation grows faster than its structures. Much of what we work with today came from concrete requirements of the running operation.
Operational reality
Team, partners, day-to-day work.
Today, staff and external partners are part of the operation. I directly lead a team of around ten people and work with two cleaning service providers.
- Distribution and pricingBooking portals, demand and price control across several properties and locations.
- Guest communicationInformation, the digital guest journey and reliable communication across many bookings.
- HousekeepingCleaning, standards and coordination with external partners.
- Organisation and costsResponsibilities, commercial control and decisions in the running operation. The operation carries revenue in the millions.
- SystemsPMS, digital processes and workflows that came out of the operation. This is operating practice, not an offer to develop software.
An operation cannot be scaled in theory.
Pricing, processes, systems, staff and service providers work together in day-to-day operations. This experience is the basis of my Operator Consulting.