How Hotel GUESTapart in Aarhus used its Valpas certification to increase direct-booking conversion

A three-month booking-flow test indicated an 8.4% relative conversion lift and approximately €6,100 in additional booking value.

Hotel GUESTapart at a glance: 86 design apartments in Aarhus, Denmark, 9 conference rooms with space for up to 120 guests in one room, Valpas-certified since spring 2021, rated 9.1/10 on Booking.com and 9.7/10 on Hotels.com

An Aarhus aparthotel built on getting the details right

The hotel serves two main types of travellers: business guests visiting for work or a conference, and families or couples staying longer. Nicolaj Skafsgaard, CTO, works across technology, operations and the guest journey. His approach is simple: get the details right and guests come back. That care is reflected in the hotel's certifications and registrations: Green Key for the environment, God Adgang for accessibility and, since spring 2021, Valpas.

The safety guests look for before they book, and keep to themselves

Guests increasingly choose where to stay with safety in mind. Bed bugs travel the world in luggage, arriving with anyone, at any hotel. They are a phenomenon travellers carry, not a housekeeping failure. Hotel GUESTapart recognised early that this assurance could matter to guests.

The research points in the same direction. A 2026 Phocuswright survey of over 1,000 travellers across the U.S., U.K. and France found that pests such as bed bugs were the biggest concern when booking a hotel, ahead of cleanliness and staff. Travellers often act on that concern privately, long before they book. Like Wi-Fi and sustainability before it, verified safety is becoming an attribute guests increasingly consider when choosing where to stay.

Why a design aparthotel added verified bed bug safety to its guest promise

When Hotel GUESTapart looked at Valpas, the fit was clear. The certification runs continuously and gives the hotel real-time, verified proof of a bed bug-safe stay. It uses no pesticides. It blends into the apartment and asks nothing of the guest. And it produces digital proof the hotel can show wherever guests decide, on the website, at the booking step and at the front desk.

This is particularly relevant for an aparthotel, where guests often stay longer and value their privacy. Continuous, per-room verification means a bed bug carried in is caught before it can affect the stay, without anyone needing to enter the room. This assurance remains in place throughout a long stay, not only on the day someone checks in.

Verification by an independent third party, rather than the hotel vouching for itself, is exactly the kind of assurance a careful guest may look for. Bureau Veritas verifies the key criteria. For a hotel that had already earned Green Key certification and God Adgang registration, adding verified safety was a natural extension of the same guest promise

At Hotel GUESTapart, technology should work quietly in the background and make the stay smarter, safer and simpler. Valpas fits that approach because it provides continuous protection without asking the guest to change how they stay.”
- Nicolaj Skafsgaard, CTO, Hotel GUESTapart

Showing the bed bug-safe attribute at booking indicated an 8.4% relative conversion lift, worth just over €2,000 a month. Then Hotel GUESTapart went a step further. It became one of the first hotels to trial surfacing its bed bug-safe attribute directly in its own booking flow, so guests see the verified assurance at the moment they choose where to stay.

The result was commercially encouraging. Over a three-month test, visitors to whom the attribute was shown converted at 8.06%, compared with 7.44% in the control group, an 8.36% relative lift. Normalised to comparable traffic, this equates to approximately 14.5 additional direct bookings and €6,091 in projected booking value across the test window, or just over €2,000 a month. The test was limited in scale, so the result should be treated as indicative rather than conclusive. Even so, it suggests the label did more than reassure: it helped convert guests looking for precisely this kind of verified signal.

The same Phocuswright research found that 79–84% of travellers said they would book an independently certified four-star hotel over an uncertified five-star hotel at the same price. It suggests verified safety can be a powerful differentiator. Hotel GUESTapart's own booking data points in the same direction. As more guests use AI and search to evaluate hotels before booking, visible and verifiable attributes are likely to become increasingly important.

Hotel GUESTapart's guests are mostly Danish and often travel close to home. The uplift observed in the hotel's own booking data suggests that the demand measured in the three research markets is relevant in the Nordics too.

“What makes the test interesting is that we did not change the room, the price or the booking process. We simply made an existing safety feature visible, and the guests who saw it converted at a higher rate.”
- Nicolaj Skafsgaard, CTO, Hotel GUESTapart

Verified safety, now part of the guest promise

For Hotel GUESTapart, verified safety is now part of the guest promise, alongside the organic breakfast and the design. Bed bug-safe is becoming a bookable attribute across travel platforms, and early adopters are making a previously hidden aspect of hotel safety more visible to guests.