Bellhopp

Guest experience app for independent hotels

Bellhopp set out to give small, independent hotels the kind of app-based guest experience the big chains have — without losing the personal touch. CodeLeap designed and built the MVP end to end: the iOS and Android apps, the web app and the backend behind them.

What we did CodeLeap designed and built the iOS, Android and web apps together with the backend API behind them, covering guest welcome and announcements, in-app communication between guest and hotel, and the tools staff use to run it day to day.

Small hotels compete on staff who know a guest by name and remember what they like, but rarely have the technology to match a Marriott or an Airbnb. Bellhopp wanted to close that gap with one app: a modern place for a hotel to greet its guests, keep them informed and give front-desk staff the tools to run it. CodeLeap designed and built the complete MVP across guest and staff sides.

Product features

iOS, Android and web from one build

We built the product across all three platforms on a single shared backend, so a hotel and its guests get the same experience whichever device they reach for. Every release stays in step, which matters for a small team that cannot maintain three products.
Hotel profiles and guest sign-in

Guests find and join their hotel, then see its profile and history in one place. The app opens onto the hotel they are actually staying at rather than a generic home screen, which is what makes it feel like the hotel's own product.
Announcements feed and chat channels

Each hotel posts announcements and messages guests through in-app chat channels. The front desk can pass on a check-in detail, a local tip or an answer to a question without a phone call or a note pushed under the door.
Front-desk and admin tools

Staff manage the guest list and the announcements going out to it, while an admin layer manages hotels, channels and users. This is the operational side that lets a small team run the whole thing themselves, without calling anyone for support.

Challenge

The guest-facing app was only half the product. A hotel with a handful of staff will not adopt something that needs a technical person to operate, so the staff tools had to be as considered as the guest experience and simple enough for a front desk to run between check-ins. There was also a delivery constraint. Bellhopp needed something real to put in front of hotels, across every platform a guest might use, on the budget and timeline of an early-stage company rather than an established one.

Solution

CodeLeap designed and built the MVP across iOS, Android and web on one shared backend, covering guest sign-in and hotel profiles, the announcements feed, in-app chat channels, and the front-desk and admin tools behind them. Building on a single backend kept the three platforms consistent and kept the cost of the build in proportion. The result was delivered for beta testing with hotels, which gave a small team a real product to take to market rather than a pitch deck: the personal welcome of an independent hotel, in an app both guests and staff could actually use.