Encore Mieux grows faster with direct bookings

Encore Mieux is a rapidly growing French hotel brand bringing a fresh approach to hospitality in mid-sized cities like Orléans, Tours, Limoges, and Arles. Unlike traditional chains, Encore Mieux offers personalised stays with a strong digital backbone and a focus on each property’s unique story.

During a major rebrand, co-founder Maxime Lesaulnier and CTO Timothée Barray shared how the team is bringing this vision to life with a tech stack designed to grow alongside the business.

“Our promise is built on three essentials: guests never wait to access their rooms, every property is one-of-a-kind, and sleep quality is a priority. Technology enhances each of these moments while keeping the experience human.” - Maxime stated.

Challenge: Monetising real estate assets in mid-sized cities

60% of hotels in France’s mid-sized cities have fewer than 40 rooms and lag behind in their digital transformation. Encore Mieux identified a unique opportunity: to revitalise these overlooked assets through an innovative hospitality concept grounded in the heritage of each location, digitalisation and operational excellence.

Yet bringing this vision to life on the ground requires more than a strong brand identity. It demands a technological foundation capable of supporting hotel operations autonomously, delivering personalised guest journeys and enabling rapid growth.

With the ambition of opening 50 hotels by 2028, Encore Mieux needed a property management platform aligned with its aspirations and its vision of a fully digital guest experience.

It was essential to make the right technology choices to simplify booking, declutter reception areas, eliminate physical keys and cards, and deliver information to the right person at the right time. That’s where Apaleo came in.

Solution: Apaleo as the cornerstone of an API-first architecture

“Apaleo provided exactly what we needed: an open, reliable and robust tech solution on which to build our own layer. With unlimited API access and clear documentation, our team was able to develop Nestor.OS, our customer and front-office management interface, which is natively connected to Apaleo,” explains the Encore Mieux team.

Creating a smooth, intuitive, mobile-first guest journey without requiring an app download - from booking to check-out - was achieved within Nestor.OS, which orchestrates and centralises every guest touchpoint.

Additional features include an Internet Booking Engine (IBE) for dynamic rate display, pre- and post-stay workflows, customer profile analysis, identity verification via Stripe Identity and remote access management.

Result: 40% of reservations are direct, and growing!

Thanks to its bespoke booking engine and loyalty tools, Encore Mieux has increased the proportion of direct bookings to 38–40%, even in locations off the main tourist routes.

An impressive Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 52 shows guests are highly satisfied with the digital experience.

“Once a guest discovers this experience, they come back for its simplicity,” emphasises Maxime.

“Without Apaleo’s open APIs, we could never have developed Nestor. The platform is stable, fast and exceptionally accessible to micro-services and developers, with genuinely responsive support.” Timothy added.

Challenge: How do you manage 8 hotels at once with minimal staff?

On site, only housekeeping and maintenance teams are present, entirely dedicated to guest service. Headquarters must manage all marketing, operational and administrative functions remotely - a scenario that traditional PMS systems struggle to support natively, whereas Apaleo evolved precisely to meet this need.

Solution: Online reception and centralised operations

All Encore Mieux hotels operate through a single operational system. Customer accounts, team workflows and property data are fully centralised, enabling any team member to handle a reservation for any hotel at any time.

“It’s a genuine paradigm shift for service quality and team flexibility,” the team adds.

The tech stack revolves around the Apaleo Open PMS and Apaleo Pay to handle all payment flows, from booking to check-out, with centralised transaction management across the booking engine and OTAs.

Additional tools include:

Make.com: A no-code visual automation platform for building workflows
Sanity: A structured, powerful and flexible headless CMS ideal for managing both local and generic content via APIs.
Trengo: An omnichannel platform consolidating emails, WhatsApp, SMS, chat and OTA messages into a single AI-optimised shared inbox.

On the distribution side, RoomCloud, Booking.com and Google Connect synchronise rates, availability and content across 400+ OTAs, GDS and metasearch platforms.

And because you can’t manage effectively without measuring, Airtable provides an operational dashboard for collaborative data management, workflow tracking and daily performance visibility.

Result: 100% of check-ins are digital and self-service

Every guest completes their check-in online and accesses their room without ever needing face-to-face interaction. This model has been working perfectly for over three years, across all guest demographics.

Key indicators show:

An average check-in/check-out time of three minutes
95% of guests use fully digital access
80% complete identity verification via Stripe Identity

“Guests aged 25–40 think it’s ideal. Those between 40 and 60 adapt well. Even our guests over 60 recognise the ease and simplicity of the system,” the team explains.

“The success of our model is built on a quality ‘phygital’ relationship with guests: onsite teams are dedicated to guest satisfaction, while technology handles repetitive tasks and removes friction.” Maxime added.

Challenge: How to scale teams, processes and technology without losing momentum?

With 8 properties already in the portfolio and a goal of 50 by 2028, Encore Mieux not only needed robust, modular and scalable technology but also partners capable of supporting their vision and anticipating inevitable challenges.

Another growth lever is the launch of a white-label tech solution aimed at independent hoteliers who want to digitise their operations affordably.

Solution: Ongoing innovation and anticipation

Opening more hotels, yes - but never compromising on quality. The Encore Mieux team is an active and recognised contributor in the Apaleo Community, where they can prototype, test and roll out tools ahead of the curve. They are currently piloting combined inventories and synchronisation of multiple sources.

Another driver of innovation is creating a white-label product for independent hoteliers lacking the in-house development capacity or budget for a fully bespoke system.

Naturally, no conversation about innovation today can ignore the impact of AI and robotics in the service industry. Thanks to Apaleo’s Agent Hub, the Encore Mieux team can test targeted use cases where AI brings strong added value: understanding and handling simple, repetitive or urgent requests, across channels and languages, autonomously, 24/7.

Result: Up to 40% savings on operating costs

Compared with traditional hotel models, Encore Mieux has achieved significantly improved profitability. A powerful indicator is the resolution of complaints and special requests in under five minutes.

“When we compare our P&Ls with standard hotels, our technology-driven model allows us to operate with fewer staff, lower training costs and no reception desks, without compromising service quality,” they explain.

This lean model also appeals to investors, who can now consider hotel operations with higher margins and therefore faster returns on investment.

“Being part of the Apaleo Community means moving faster. We co-create, test and refine. It’s a pragmatic and effective way to innovate. It’s also an unparalleled innovation circle and source of insight into AI’s impact on our industry.” Timothée added.

Conclusion

“Airbnb proved to us that the real barrier to entry in hospitality is no longer capital or property, it’s technology. With Apaleo and our modular stack, we are demonstrating that a digital guest experience can be human, profitable and scalable.” Maxime explained.