In May 2025, we launched a digital worker powered by Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to increase the inventory available to book instantly via our online booking tool (OBT). Since then, we’ve tested and refined the RPA workflow, and our digital worker has been completing the full end-to-end rate mapping process unassisted for more than five months.
We’re now excited to formally introduce the new digital member of our workforce, and share the transformative results for bookers and operators of serviced apartments, as well as our own people.
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Key definitions
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) = a software that does computer tasks in the same way a human would, but faster and without getting tired. Software robots or artificial intelligence (AI) agents take care of mundane, repetitive admin tasks so humans can focus on more meaningful, cognitive work.
Online Booking Tool (OBT) = a self-service platform used to search for and book serviced apartments. The SilverDoor OBT is an invite-only platform available at silverdoor.com which presents apartments with live pricing and availability that users can book instantly.
Live rate = the real-time price of a serviced apartment based on current availability. A live rate/price means the serviced apartment can be booked instantly without making an enquiry that needs to be manually checked and confirmed.
Rate plans = different pricing options per apartment, such as short-stay rates, long-stay rates, corporate negotiated rates, seasonal rates, or other discounted and promotional offers. These are loaded into a property management system or a channel manager/global distribution system (GDS) and fetched by our OBT, and make sure bookers are always seeing the most accurate, competitive pricing.
Rate mapping = the process of linking the right live prices and rate plans to the right apartments. Mapping an apartment with live rates makes sure prices and availability update automatically, so booking platforms always show accurate, up-to-date information without manual updates.
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Where it all began: identifying a gap in the industry
Demands from our clients for a global portfolio of instantly bookable corporate housing and serviced accommodation options has increased significantly in recent years; across the corporate travel industry, online availability has become critical to the mass adoption of corporate housing. Businesses and travellers expect a smooth, personalised, consumer-grade booking journey where they can book long and short stays online with client-specific live rates.
We had already made great strides in broadening the volume of content available online, but the arduous process of loading, mapping and testing live rate plans made it difficult for us and our property operators to do it quickly and accurately enough to meet demand. Our team’s ability to add value elsewhere was also limited by the time investment required to manage the lengthy, admin-heavy process.
An operational gap: the critical barrier to fulfilling client demand
The problem we faced was the process for adding properties and loading online rates and availability into an OBT, which can be labour intensive, mundane, repetitive and slow. The loading, mapping and testing process for online rate plans requires a lot of manual data entry and exchange with different data sources, especially when you could have different rates for different apartment types, clients, length of stays, and booking volumes.
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“At the heart of the issue was a human resource model straining to keep pace. Employees were being asked to deliver deterministic outcomes (tasks governed by predefined rules and logic), while also being expected to perform higher-value, cognitive and relationship-driven work. SilverDoor needed a scalable solution, not just to meet the growing demand, but to enable their people to focus on delivering customer experience, driving innovation, and executing strategy.” - Digital Workforce Development Partner, Centelli |
Our ability to fulfil the increasing demand for live, instantly bookable content on our OBT was limited by the heavily manual processes required to integrate rate plans. This operational gap created a bottleneck at a time when speed, accuracy, and engagement were critical.
The solution: meet our RPA-powered digital worker
We needed a scalable and sustainable solution, not just to meet the growing demand, but to enable our people to focus on the things they do best: delivering customer experience, driving innovation, and executing strategy. The solution needed to easily ingest and display accurate, live, and instantly bookable inventory at scale, around the clock with no fatigue, and without depending on human intervention.
In 2024, we started working with UiPath and their automation partner, Centelli, to develop a digital worker powered by Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and infused with AI. Named “Brian”, our digital worker has become a permanent member of our Partner Relationships rates team. He operates 24/7/365, handling the high-volume, rule-based tasks involved in uploading and maintaining apartment listings on our OBT.
The Life of Brian: the evolution of our digital worker
Identifying where automation could take the heavy lifting away from our people
SilverDoor will always be a service-first business, so the use of AI or automation in our operations will only ever be within a set of guiding principles; primarily that it will never reduce the quality of service we provide or be used as a replacement for human interactions with customers.
Our solution uses robotics infused with AI for back-end efficiency to enhance our client-facing, human offering.
Launching our RPA-powered digital worker and seeing real results hasn’t happened overnight; we formalised our business-level automation strategy in line with our technology roadmap in early 2024, then the digital workforce journey properly began in October 2024:
September 2024: We formalise our AI and automation strategy, identifying business areas which could benefit from these technologies
October 2024: Exploratory work done to map existing processes & identify inefficiencies
January 2025: Investment is approved for an RPA solution to support the mass upload of live rates
February 2025: We analyse the manual rate mapping & testing process to see which tasks could be automated
March 2025: Soft launch & test phase – our digital worker, Brian, is officially “switched on”
May 2025: Brian maps & tests his first-rate plan, successfully automating 70% of the process
September 2025: Brian completes full end-to-end mapping process unassisted, ten times faster than a human
The result: automation that feels human
We needed a solution with the speed and flexibility to adapt to complex, varied data formats from our global property partners; this is where Brian excels.
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“The digital worker we developed with SilverDoor mimics human employee behaviours like logging in, interpreting data, validating information, and executing updates, but without the fatigue, availability constraints, or inconsistency risks of real people.” - Digital Workforce Development Partner, Centelli |
The end result of the automation is ultimately very simple: all the customer sees on the front-end is a bigger portfolio of options to book instantly via our OBT. In the back end though, Brian’s hybrid architecture means he is built to handle deterministic, admin-based processes, while also being able to interface in a more human working environment.
The automation covers five key processes:
Mapping documents – Brian cross-checks apartment details and mapping criteria against our content management system, SilverDoor Connect.
Path-specific mapping – Handling differences between GDS and channel manager integrations.
Rate testing – Brian executes test bookings, validates policies, and confirms credentials.
Exception handling – Cases that cannot be completed automatically are flagged back to the team.
Auditing existing rate plans – In the time between mapping and testing new rate plans, Brian tests whether existing rate plans are up to date, accurate, still returning the correct availability, and offering the most competitive prices.
Our digital worker can load live rates 10x faster than a human!
Time taken to map, test and load one rate plan:
Transformative benefits for buyers, operators, SilverDoor people, and the industry as a whole
Greater choice
By accelerating the mass upload of global online inventory, this technology innovation gives buyers greater choice of online accommodation options instantly bookable on the SilverDoor OBT.
More accuracy
As quantity grows in our online inventory, so does quality: not only can Brian load and manage more property listings, but he also ensures the accuracy of existing information, so that the OBT always shows the correct, most competitive prices and discounting.
Better speed to market
Previously, the operational bottleneck meant that updates to OBT property listings could take hours or even days to reflect on the front-end. With Brian in place, updates are made in near real-time, meaning customers see live, instantly bookable options the moment they become available.
Access to a bigger pool of valuable business
Now that there’s no delay between operators providing their live rate plans and the listing becoming available to bookers on the OBT, operators get online reservations more quickly and ultimately have access to more revenue streams.
More chance to fill vacant units
Brian’s auditing also allows operators to fill last-minute availability and be more tactical with bespoke pricing for SilverDoor clients to boost occupancy.
Better operational efficiency
Brian now handles the heavy lifting of managing and updating online property listings, processing thousands of updates daily with accuracy and consistency. Lengthy, admin-heavy tasks are now executed autonomously and continuously, meaning SilverDoor people can now focus their time on more interesting and rewarding tasks like negotiating rates and troubleshooting.
Wider adoption of serviced apartments
Broadening the live inventory of apartments available to book easily and instantly fulfils corporate demand for more online content will support the shift to more travel programmes and policies featuring serviced apartments as standard.
Success story: how Brian mapped 500+ rate plans in 6.5 hours to accelerate Limehome’s online distribution
Limehome is a leading tech-enabled operator in the hospitality industry offering functional design accommodations across Europe. Founded in 2018, Limehome manages over 11,000 apartments and hotel rooms under contract across 154 cities in 13 European countries. As their inventory continues to scale, so does the operational demands of keeping rate plans updated and ensuring new properties are quickly available to book online.
With thousands of units and new openings coming online constantly, the Limehome team faced:
Heavy manual workload verifying and processing individual test bookings
Limited visibility into the mapping and testing process
Backlogs caused by high volume and time-zone differences
Dependency on human bandwidth, meaning delays in making inventory instantly bookable
Since being deployed, Brian has successfully mapped and tested:
- 500+ Limehome rate plans
- In just 6.5 hours
- Manually, this would have taken 73.5 hours – almost nine working days of human effort.
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“Brian has made the whole rate mapping and testing process more transparent and much easier for us. Receiving all the test booking details clearly in one place, plus the regular reminders, really streamlined our work – especially given the large number of properties we manage. What impressed me most is that the communication felt completely natural; I often forgot I was talking to a digital worker rather than a human one. The automation has genuinely improved our workflow and made it easier for us to connect our properties with SilverDoor’s online booking platform.” - Sandra Q. Borges, B2B Brand Partnerships at Limehome |
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We have also refined Brian’s instructions to accommodate the mapping process for large franchise operators following our recent partnership with IHG. The partnership demonstrates true robotics-driven scalability with a global brand and represents the capacity for further innovation on our RPA and AI roadmap.
You can speak to a member of our team for more information about the RPA, and register your interest in our OBT here.
