About Swift Hotel Lodge
A WhatsApp-native hotel management and booking platform, built for Cameroon.
Travellers find and book hotels through WhatsApp. Hotels manage their bookings, availability and performance through the same number. No app to download, no website required on either side — this one is the shop window, not the product. Just WhatsApp.
Finding somewhere to stay in Buea usually means asking a friend, calling a number someone gave you, or turning up and hoping. The big booking sites list a handful of properties here, and most hotels and guest houses have no website at all. So we went and looked at them ourselves — 23 properties across 11 neighbourhoods so far, with photos, room prices and honest notes on each one.
The three problems we solve
Hotels miss bookings
Somebody messages at 9pm asking about a room. Nobody sees it until morning, and by morning they have booked somewhere else. The booking was never lost to a competitor — it was lost to a reply that came too late.
Bookings are scattered
One on WhatsApp, one from a phone call, one who walked in at midnight. No single place shows which rooms are actually taken tonight, which is exactly how the same room gets sold twice.
Travellers cannot see availability
Every other option makes you message and then wait, with no idea whether there is even a room. Most people give up and try the next hotel on the list.
How we verify a listing
We go there
Every property on this site has been visited in person. We walk the rooms, check the generator, and note what the street is like at night.
We record what matters
Room tiers and real prices, which amenities actually work, transport fares to the main road, nearby food, and how secure the compound is.
We only publish what we can stand behind
A listing stays hidden until we have photos and confirmed details. Prices get corrected as they change — an out-of-date price helps nobody.
How we make money
Browsing is free and always will be — every listing, photo and price, with no account to create. We earn in two places, and neither of them is a cut of the room.
- Guests pay a 6% service fee
- Added on top of the room, shown separately before you commit, and never taken out of what the property is owed. If a room is 40,000 the hotel is owed 40,000 and receives 40,000; the fee is ours and is the price of the booking, not of the bed.
- Hotels pay nothing to be here
- Everything here is free for hotels — no fee, no commission, no contract, and no end date. A listed property appears in search, shows live availability, receives booking requests and answers them without ever being invoiced. That is not an introductory offer with a date on it — it is how this works.
- Hotels pay nothing for the software either, for now
- Swift Desk — the front desk their staff run from their own phones — is free while we build this out. A tool nobody has used yet is not worth an invoice, and a hotel should see what it does before anyone asks them for anything.
When you actually pay
A booking here is a request until the property answers it, so nothing is taken before they do. Most platforms either charge everything up front or nothing at all; we do neither, because a request that can be declined must not take money first.
- 1You send a request. Nothing is charged, and nothing is owed if the property says no.
- 2The property confirms. Paying our 6% by MoMo is what holds the room in your name, and it takes a minute.
- 3You pay the room to the property itself — their full rate, on their usual terms.
What a hotel gets, and what it costs
Nothing. Not the listing, not the bookings, not the front desk. A hotel in Buea pays us nothing at all today, and we do not take a cut of anybody’s room price — guests pay a small service fee on top of the rate, and that is what funds this.
Getting found, and getting booked
Free, with no end date.
- Your own page, with photographs we take ourselves
- Found by guests searching by area, price, dates and category
- Booking requests sent straight to you
- Confirm or decline with one tap — no account, no password
- Tell us what is free and guests see it live on your listing
- Your real rooms on file, so we hold a room instead of asking
- Today's arrivals, pending requests and every guest's number
- Your monthly numbers: searches, views, bookings, nights
- A booking link of your own to share, if you have no website
Swift Desk — running the property
Also free. Your front desk, on your staff’s own phones.
- Today’s arrivals, every morning — who is coming, and the number to reach them on
- Every request still waiting on you, in one list instead of scattered up a chat
- One code your staff enter once, from their own phones — no app, no login, no training
- They type “room 102 taken tonight” or “202 free” in WhatsApp, and the system knows
- A grid that colours itself from your bookings — confirm a guest into 103 and 103 turns red
- Walk-ins written as real bookings, so a blocked room stops being offered for tomorrow too
- The database itself refuses a second booking on the same room for the same nights
- Mark a room free and it stays red if a booked guest is in it tonight — and names them
We may charge for this part one day, and if we do you will be told before it happens, not after. Being listed and taking bookings stay free either way — that is not a promotion, it is how this works.
Run a hotel or guest house in Buea?
We will come and photograph the property, record your room tiers and prices, and put you in front of people already looking for somewhere to stay. Everything here is free for hotels — no fee, no commission, no contract, and no end date. Your listing, your bookings, your arrivals, your guests' numbers, your monthly figures, live availability and Swift Desk — the front desk your staff run from their own phones — all of it, at no cost. We do not take a cut of your room price and we never will; guests pay us a small service fee on top of your rate, which is how this is paid for. You are not being sold anything.