Urban Rest is a hotel group that is “redefining traditional accommodation with a progressive and next-generation approach.”
Established in Sydney, Australia, Urban Rest’s journey began in 2017 in response to a lack of accommodation options for business travel and relocation.
David Whelan, CEO & Founder , mentions that in response, “our vision is simple, we want to bring joy back to how people travel for work. It’s a simple ethos that we have made scalable across 4 countries, with spaces designed as more than just a place to sleep
With apartments that are larger than the rooms in a conventional hotel, stylish interiors, greater flexibility than long-term rentals, a consistent and exceptional customer experience and 24/7 coverage to rival a hotel front desk, it’s no surprise that Urban Rest has gone from strength to strength.
“We’re leveraging technology to offer guests a 24/7 ‘digital reception desk’ with our around-the-clock customer support and reservations teams,” says David.
“This strategic advantage enables us to open properties in highly sought-after lifestyle locations that larger hotels find challenging to enter.”
What started as a handful of properties has developed into a 1000+ unit portfolio across key business hubs in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. In the past two to three years, the portfolio has doubled in size and expanded its offerings, explains Trent O’Donoghue, Marketing Manager.
“While our asset mix remains largely focused on boutique serviced apartments, we’ve recently expanded into hotel management agreements (HMAs), including a 149-key property, set to become Urban Rest Melbourne CBD in mid-2026,” he says.
“This expansion and breadth underscore our commitment to bringing joy back to how people stay when they travel for work, offering short-to-long-term boutique accommodation in the cities where work travel continues to grow.”
Supporting this journey with powerful and reliable technology is SiteMinder’s leading hotel platform, offering Urban Rest complete control of strategic distribution management across complex channels and assets.
SiteMinder GDS fuels long-stay business growth and revenue uplift
Rapid growth, especially on a large scale, can prove challenging for even the most shrewd operators. This was the case for Urban Rest too, which needed to balance the expansion of unique properties and locations with modern guest expectations.
“Corporate and leisure travellers alike have come to expect seamless experiences from booking through to check-out,” explains Trent.
With SiteMinder integrated into the business, these challenges were overcome via key features such as the GDS and Metasearch Manager.
“SiteMinder allows us to distribute to two key segments strategically across both asset types, with GDS integration to build a base of corporate business, and Metasearch Manager helping to capture leisure bookers who rate shopping and shift booking behaviour to direct,” he says.
SiteMinder GDS helps the group increase its visibility among global travel agents and connect to key long-stay corporate guests, with full technical support provided by SiteMinder’s team. Optimisation sessions were also held to ensure the sales and distribution teams had access to the latest market insights and best practices.
“SiteMinder allows us to distribute all properties into the GDS through one unified platform. This reduces admin, ensures that existing corporate accounts have seamless access to negotiated rates, and allows us to build strong travel management company (TMC) and relocation management company (RMC) partnerships, effectively capturing the base long-stay business that the Urban Rest model is built on,” Trent explains.
With almost 80% of Urban Rests’s room nights made up of corporate and long-stay business, SiteMinder GDS delivers both visibility and an easy way to maintain relationships with key clients, providing reliable access to corporate and negotiated rates.
“With SiteMinder helping to power our portfolio expansion and widen our global reach, we’ve seen a 51% revenue uplift year-on-year between January and March,” Trent shares.
Metasearch Manager maximises performance during seasonal demand peaks
While Urban Rest may rely largely on corporate and long-stay clients, filling occupancy gaps with leisure guests is essential for overall revenue performance.
SiteMinder’s Metasearch Manager is a key enabler of this strategy, allowing hoteliers to capture direct reservations from high intent travellers through channels such as Google, Trivago, and TripAdvisor.
“SiteMinder gives us the visibility we need to compete directly with OTA channels through Google Hotel Ads. It’s been particularly valuable during peak leisure demand periods, where the ability to automate bidding at a property level means we can target occupancy gaps using bid modifiers in a much more strategic way and meaningfully grow our share of direct bookings,” Trent mentions.
The brand has also seen increased visibility from small-to-medium enterprises, which may be lacking access to the GDS or a travel management company.
“This reach across audiences has been invaluable to our direct booking strategy, with promising early results, we’re looking forward to rolling out the platform more broadly across key assets and building on the momentum we’ve created,” says Trent.
SiteMinder establishes unified, efficient, operations across teams
With so many moving parts within an enterprise as large as Urban Rest, a single source of truth for daily operations can be incredibly powerful. Over time, greater efficiency, more accuracy, and enhanced agility will deliver substantial revenue results.
As a platform, this is one of SiteMinder’s defining strengths, according to Trent.
“SiteMinder gives us a unified way to manage distribution across complex channels. With multiple teams involved, from Revenue to Marketing and Finance, SiteMinder gives us a single, clear view of property performance across every segment that we target,” he says.
“Additionally, SiteMinder’s integrations with leading PMS platforms reduce manual effort for global reservations teams, cutting the time needed to service high-value corporate accounts to minutes. Support teams can manage payment tracking, reporting and reconciliation without switching between systems, reducing overall case load and the risk of manual error.”
Overall, the result is a perfectly in-tune distribution model. With SiteMinder fusing simple, fast, automation with powerful capabilities and reach, Urban Rest can capture the full travel demand that is available to the brand.
“From rate plan setup to third-party integrations, SiteMinder has helped ensure we’re showing up where our guests are shopping, capturing high-intent bookings and converting them into returning guests.”
SiteMinder is proud to have been a part of Urban Rest’s journey so far and look forward to continuing our collaboration in the future!