How StayIn cut cleaning coordination from 4 hours to 20 minutes a day

The challenge

StayIn grew from 40 to 280 units over 14 months. The ops stack that worked at 40 — Hostaway + a cleaning spreadsheet + a WhatsApp group — started breaking at 120.

By unit #200, a typical morning looked like this:

• 7:00 AM — coordinator scrolls through the Hostaway calendar, listing every apartment with a checkout
• 7:30 AM — messages each cleaner individually with the list of that day's jobs
• 10:00 AM — three messages asking "which room in Lozenets, #3 or #4?"
• 11:30 AM — a guest in Varna hasn't received their PIN. Coordinator scrambles to generate one from the Yale app
• 1:00 PM — a cleaner didn't show up. Coordinator reassigns
• 4:00 PM — tries to chase QC photos from 28 cleanings

The team lost 4 hours a day to coordination. Guest response time averaged 90 minutes. Two missed cleanings in the prior month had cost them a 4.6-star review.

The switch

StayIn migrated over a single weekend:

• Friday evening — imported 280 listings + 180 days of future reservations via the Guesty/Hostaway importer
• Saturday — connected 280 smart locks (mix of Yale, Schlage and Igloohome), connected the team's 14 cleaners to the Cleaner Portal
• Sunday — turned on Shadow Mode for AI messaging. The coordinator reviewed every draft for 48 hours
• Monday morning — flipped AI to Live Mode. Coordinator freed up

What changed

Messaging. The AI now handles 92% of guest messages in English, Bulgarian and German without human review. Median response time dropped from 90 minutes to 31 seconds. The remaining 8% — complex refunds, legal issues, damage claims — route to the coordinator with full context.

Cleaning dispatch. Instead of a human picking who cleans what, Shortrental's AI now assigns jobs based on each cleaner's location, current workload, QC pass rate and how well they've handled similar apartment types in the past. Dispatch happens at 6 AM for the full day.

Upsells. Early check-in, late checkout and mid-stay cleaning used to be offered ad-hoc, when guests asked. The AI now proactively offers them at booking confirmation. 1 in 4 guests accepts — adding roughly €38,000/month in ancillary revenue.

QC. Cleaners now submit photo-based checklists via the Cleaner Portal. The AI auto-flags missing items (towels, WiFi card, welcome note). StayIn cut QC-related guest complaints by 76%.

The result

After 90 days on Shortrental.ai:

• 4 hours/day saved on ops coordination
• 92% of messages auto-replied, 24/7
• +€38k/month in upsell revenue
• 4.93 average guest rating (up from 4.81)
• 0 double-bookings (down from 4–6 per quarter)

The coordinator is no longer a coordinator — she now runs StayIn's guest experience and loyalty programs, a strategic role that's driving their 2026 expansion into Thessaloniki.

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StayIn operates across Bulgaria's three largest tourist regions. Start your trial → and see the same playbook in your portfolio.

“Before Shortrental we had a full-time coordinator just pinging cleaners on WhatsApp. Now the AI dispatches every job based on checkout time, cleaner availability and QC history. My coordinator is now running guest experience strategy — a much more valuable job.”