A smoother arrival with Pair

A smoother arrival with Pair

It is a grey winter morning in Mitte. Outside Holiday Inn Express Berlin – Alexanderplatz on Stralauer Strasse, traffic hums down towards the river Spree. Inside, the lobby is calm: a steady stream of business travellers checking out, a few families with rolling suitcases heading towards the U-Bahn at Klosterstraße, just around the corner.

Below the building lies the hotel's small on-site garage. It is not large, but in central Berlin every space matters. And on this particular morning, almost every one of them has already been booked (and paid for) by guests who have not yet arrived.

"When we started with Pair in December, I honestly didn't expect to see bookings come in for months ahead," says Peter Busonero, General Manager at Holiday Inn Express Berlin – Alexanderplatz. "But within a few weeks our garage was pre-booked, month by month, almost a year out. Our guests really want the certainty of knowing their parking space is waiting for them."

A small garage with a big logistics problem

Before Pair arrived in December 2025, the hotel managed parking the way most city-centre hotels still do: manually. Guests called or e-mailed in advance to ask whether a space might be available. Some were promised a spot, others were told to try their luck on arrival. Payment was added to the room bill at checkout, or settled separately at reception.

It worked, but it tied up the front desk team and left no real overview of who was parked where, or when a space would free up.

Magnus Kleist, CSO at Pair, remembers visiting the garage with Pair's founder Per Gerleman before the rollout.

"We were standing outside the entrance when a guest drove up, got out of the car and read the signs," Magnus says. "He looked irritated, got back in, drove off and parked somewhere else, just to walk in to reception and ask. Per and I started laughing. We had seen exactly that scene a hundred times before, in a hundred other hotels. It is the moment that tells you the system isn't working for the guest."

From manual handling to self-service

With Pair Booking in place, the experience changed overnight. Guests can now reserve a parking space when they book their room, or simply scan a QR code on arrival. Payment is handled automatically. The front desk only needs to step in when the guest specifically asks for it – for example to put parking on the room bill, settle at checkout or apply a complimentary stay.

The numbers from the first months tell the story clearly. Between go-live on 2 December 2025 and early May 2026, 814 parking sessions had been completed in the garage:

• 551 were night-time parkings booked and paid in advance by guests themselves.
• 263 were handled at the front desk – mostly cases where the guest wanted parking added to the room bill, paid at checkout, or where parking was offered complimentary.

In other words, almost seven out of ten guests now handle their parking entirely on their own, before they even arrive. The same volume used to land on the reception desk, one phone call, one e-mail, one handwritten note at a time.

Less administration, more hospitality

For the front desk team, the difference shows up in the everyday rhythm of the hotel. Fewer interruptions during check-in. Fewer manual reconciliations at the end of a shift. A clear, real-time view of who is parked in the garage and for how long.

"My team can spend more time looking after the guest in front of them, instead of juggling parking questions over the phone," says Peter. "That is what hospitality is supposed to feel like."

The training of the staff was done on site by Pair, and according to Peter, the feedback was positive from the very first day.

Guests who plan ahead – and pay ahead

One of the most striking findings from the first months is just how far in advance guests are willing to plan.

"It is data we have never seen before in any other market," says Magnus. "Already by the end of December 2025, we had guests with pre-booked parking spaces in every single month all the way through to November the following year. We believe the potential here is significant."

It is a pattern that fits the profile of Holiday Inn Express Berlin – Alexanderplatz: an efficient, central hotel popular with business travellers and city-break visitors who like to know that every part of the trip is taken care of in advance.

A measurable lift in revenue

The financial side has followed the same upward curve. According to Lukas Von Trotha, CFO at the hotel, parking revenue has grown since Pair was introduced – partly because every session is now tracked and charged automatically, and partly because the pre-booking model encourages guests to commit to parking earlier in their journey.

"We have seen a clear increase in our parking revenue," Lukas Von Trotha says. “Together with the time we save at the front desk, it is a very different picture from the one we had before.”

Behind the scenes, the Pair Manager dashboard gives the hotel a real-time view of occupancy, revenue, front-desk-handled bookings and the difference between Pair's own revenue and front-desk revenue – information that simply did not exist in any structured form before.

A quiet system in a busy city

Pair Booking is part of a wider platform built specifically for hotels rather than for public city garages. It supports free, paid and complimentary parking, allows the hotel to handle VIP guests and non-residents differently, and integrates with the rest of the Pair ecosystem – including Flow for camera-based access and Recharge for EV charging – as and when the hotel chooses to expand.

For Holiday Inn Express Berlin – Alexanderplatz, the first step has been the most important one: turning a small garage from an operational headache into a service that guests can use, and trust, on their own terms.

"The best parking system is the one no one talks about," Magnus says. "When the guest drives in, the barrier opens, the spot is waiting. That is when you know it is working."

About Holiday Inn Express Berlin – Alexanderplatz

Located on Stralauer Strasse in the heart of Berlin's Mitte district, Holiday Inn Express Berlin – Alexanderplatz offers a central base just a short walk from Alexanderplatz, the Berlin TV Tower, the historic Nikolaiviertel and Museum Island. The hotel features around 186 modern guest rooms, a 24-hour bar, complimentary breakfast and a small on-site garage.

The U-Bahn station Klosterstraße is right outside the door, with direct connections across Berlin and a short transfer to Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER). The hotel is part of the global IHG Hotels & Resorts portfolio and is operated by HPG Klosterstraße GmbH.

Address: Stralauer Strasse 45, 10179 Berlin, Germany
Phone: +49 (0)30 750107 250
Website: www.ihg.com/holidayinnexpress/hotels/de/berlin