It has been another successful year for SilverDoor and the serviced apartment industry. The 31st of October marked the end of our financial year 11, and we have posted year-on-year growth of 35%, which is fantastic. We have passed some major milestones in 2011: for the first time we have placed reservations in more than 1000 serviced apartment buildings, with over 400 property partners for over 1000 clients in over 150 town and cities around the world.
Over the year we have expanded our SilverDoor family. We have added a total of 30 new members to our team, including this year's new placement students. SilverDoor has run a placement programme for four years and it has proven to be such a huge success that we expand it each year. Last year we took five placement students on board and this year we have eight to take care of and show how the working world works.
Our apartment portfolio in the UK has again grown hugely and this year it has been a priority for us to expand our international portfolio. This October Paddy Hegan joined SilverDoor as our Partner Relations and Rates Manager - International. He is fluent in French, Spanish and Portuguese and speaks conversational Italian and Russian. Since joining SilverDoor Paddy has visited 10 different cities, from Paris to Dusseldorf, and he plans to visit China in the new year.
Speaking of China, we have also taken on our first Cantonese and Mandarin speaker. Matthew He moved to the UK from China when he was 12, so speaks English, Cantonese and Mandarin like a native. In just a few months Matthew has made great strides for us, by dramatically helping to improve our property portfolio in countries like Singapore, China, Malaysia and Taiwan and by attracting clients from these countries to book serviced apartments all over the world through SilverDoor.
As well as working hard this year SilverDoor have had a lot of fun, including the continuation of the SilverDoor Lions. Due to our expansion we now have a Tuesday team and a Thursday team. This resulted in a tense and exciting game between the two a few weeks ago with the trophy being awarded to the Tuesday team.
2011 also saw the launch of our new property partner log-in system. The system is designed to make our property partners’ lives easier by completely replacing the previous paper-based process. It will allow new and existing partners to upload new properties and amend details on properties already on our website. As well as this we have put in place a new online payment system. This enables clients to pay by credit card through our website once they have received their invoice, making the process much more convenient, efficient and secure.
We ended what has been a fantastic year with our Christmas party at Il Bottaccio. We enjoyed a delicious meal - as well as lots of drinks - and we toasted to this year’s success and all that’s to come next year.
Thanks to all who’ve been part of this eventful year with us. We look forward to working with you in 2012.
