HighlightsIn the first few months of using Runnr.ai, Hey Lou Hotels has already seen impressive results across its seven hotels and 1,500+ beds:
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Hey Lou Hotels is a German hotel group operating seven properties offering guests convenient, comfortable stays in urban and airport locations. Every hotel has front desk staff available to support guests when needed, but Hey Lou uses technology to handle more administrative tasks like check-in and assigning room keys. Using Runnr.ai, Hey Lou now also automatically handles guest communications from booking through to post-check-out.
Hey Lou Hotels’ ability to combine personal hospitality with a high level of automation is enabled by 9dots. While Hey Lou Hotels is the heart of the operation—its people, its hospitality, and its connection with guests—9dots is the brain behind it. By connecting systems, processes, standards, and knowledge across the portfolio, 9dots enables more than 90% of operational processes to run automatically in the background. This gives hotel teams more time to focus on personal service and the needs of their guests.
We spoke with Linus Bihn and Sven Hirschler of parent company 9dots, to hear how Hey Lou Hotels gets value from Runnr.ai.
Guests visit Hey Lou for a multitude of reasons, from a short overnight stay before an early morning flight to a weekend getaway, and each one has their own questions. Some are easy, like 'what time is check-in?', while others take more consideration, such as 'does my room have coffee pods?'
These questions arrive through WhatsApp, Booking.com, and Expedia, often before guests have even packed their bags, and they expect a fast, accurate answer on whatever channel they used to ask.
As a brand that positions itself on digital-first stays, every delayed or off-brand response is something guests notice, even if they don't necessarily complain about it. Handling the full volume of inbound messages across channels, at the speed and quality the Hey Lou experience demands, was a growing challenge for front desk teams, particularly in busier months.
To support front desk teams and enhance digital guest experience, Hey Lou decided to try Runnr.ai for handling guest communication across its main channels. Hey Lou Hotel Monheim was selected as the initial testing ground to see how it would work with real guests.
Linus explains how this works for the welcome flow:
“When somebody makes a booking, we send the first message, thank you for your reservation. Then pre-check-in, we send the online check-in link, they download the wallet key to their phone, step in front of the lock, and the door opens.”
He adds:
“We can solve the repetitive questions, and that saves time at the hotel, so staff can really go into depth with the guests.”
Since going live, Runnr.ai has delivered consistent results across all seven Hey Lou Hotels, with Monheim leading the way as the pilot.
On average, Runnr.ai handles 92% of inbound guest communication without staff intervention. This includes messages throughout the guest journey, from the moment of booking to check-out and follow up communication. At some properties, the automation rate is even higher with Hey Lou Hotel Monheim handling 100% of all requests in individual months.
When a request requires personal approval or involves a sensitive matter, hotel staff can simply take over the conversation without the guest even noticing. As Linus explains:
“Inquiries are answered in real time, often so seamlessly that guests can hardly distinguish between AI and human interaction.”
And guests have even commented on how much they enjoy the messages, with one Google review noting: ‘The detailed communication with the AI before our arrival via WhatsApp was also very helpful and humorous.’
During the very first month of operation, Runnr.ai saved the hotels 50 to 100 hours per month, rising to 218 hours—or nearly six working weeks—by the second month in some locations. This is time that front desk teams no longer have to spend monitoring several inboxes, repeatedly typing answers to common questions, or switching between different OTA platforms.
Instead, employees can focus on the guests in front of them and on situations where personal attention genuinely adds value.
Hey Lou Hotels has reduced the response time to less than an hour, significantly faster than the industry average of four hours. Runnr.ai responds instantly to incoming queries, in any language, and notifies staff when a query needs their attention so guests aren’t left waiting. This helps Hey Lou Hotels deliver on its promise of warm hospitality both online and offline.
As Linus explains:
“Runnr.ai helps us to get in closer contact with guests”.
More than 55% of guests engage with messages sent by Runnr.ai because they’re proactive, genuinely helpful, and personalized based on their booking details and preferences in the PMS. These messages are usually sent before the guest even arrives, ensuring they have the information they need and start their stay on the right foot.
Because all seven Hey Lou properties are managed by 9dots and use the same Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), improvements at one property flow directly to the others. This can include a more precise answer to a recurring guest question, a better time to send a message, or an improved service workflow. The hotel and the central teams can share these learnings and implement relevant changes across the group.
Technology decisions may be made centrally, but it is the hotel teams that work with the systems every day. That’s why we asked Andreas Proempeler from Hey Lou Hotel Monheim about his experience with Runnr.ai so far:
“Runnr.ai is a major gain for our hotel. Less effort for the team, more experience for the guest, that’s the kind of technology that is truly making a difference in the hospitality industry."
With Runnr.ai now live across the portfolio, Hey Lou Hotels and 9dots are turning their attention to continuously improving their setup and further enhancing the guest experience. Linus explains their approach to continuous improvement:
“Success largely depends on clearly defined processes, high-quality content, and continuous development. The better the setup, the greater the added value for both the guest and our team.”
The next step is to use operational feedback from across the Hey Lou Hotels portfolio to continuously refine content, communication flows, and service processes. Hey Lou Hotels contributes the experience from daily hotel operations, Runnr.ai provides the automated communication layer, and 9dots connects the underlying systems, processes, and organizational knowledge.
Together, this creates a practical learning cycle: insights from hotel operations can be translated into shared standards and then applied across the portfolio—making the experience more helpful for guests and everyday work easier for hotel teams.
Used by 750+ accommodations across Europe, Runnr.ai is the platform of choice for hotels, hostels, and holiday parks to automate messages across WhatsApp, SMS, OTA inboxes, webchat, and more, so hospitality teams can focus on real hospitality.
Ready to upgrade your guest communication just like Hey Lou Hotels? Book a demo or try Runnr.ai on WhatsApp.