How it started
In 2020 I opened a guesthouse to save my house. Covid had done what Covid did, and the most honest path forward was to turn the place I lived in into a place other people could stay. I called it Paulshof Guesthouse, put it on Airbnb, and within months learned every pain point a small hospitality operator carries: the dependency on OTA platforms, the commission that disappears off every booking, the way an algorithm decides whether you exist this week or not. Everything I've built since has been an answer to something that hurt to learn the hard way.
From an app to websites
After Paulshof's first year I built a small app to nudge guests towards booking directly instead of through a platform. It worked well enough that I added a loyalty layer. Icon Group saw it and asked the question that bent the next five years of my life: what about websites? That turned into GHPro — guesthouse websites with booking and loyalty built in instead of bolted on.
Restaurants, pubs and the Command Centre
A while later, watching a bar full of regulars who clearly wanted to be loyal to a place with no way to recognise them, the same idea for restaurants and pubs took shape — independent venues deserve the same infrastructure guesthouses got. Then came the Command Centre, a Demand Manager, an intelligence layer. None of it was a roadmap; each piece was a thing I had to build because the thing in front of it didn't work without it.
OwnerPilot
Then clients who weren't pubs or guesthouses started asking — a wellness business, a firm, a few professional-services operators — and that became OwnerPilot, the thing you're reading this on now. Every opinion here is held by a person who has to make rent on whether the website actually works.
I'm not a marketing agency. I run a guesthouse and I build the tools the guesthouse needed.
What we build
One engine, shaped for different operators.
Hospitality
Websites for guesthouses, lodges and small hotels, with direct-booking and guest loyalty built in. The platform Paulshof itself runs on.
Food & Drink
Websites and loyalty for pubs, bars, restaurants and tasting rooms — the same infrastructure, shaped for independent venues.
Wellness
Studios, spas and practitioners: online class and session bookings, and packages and memberships without the admin.
Professional Services
Accountants, attorneys and consultants: a credible site that ranks for your service in your city and captures enquiries in one place.