DenHunt runs the whole operation for Nigerian shortlet and hostel businesses: bookings, units, staff, housekeeping, money. Publishing to the marketplace does not create a listing. It reveals the record you were already working from.
Change a rate on Tuesday and guests see it on Tuesday, because there is nowhere else to change it.
Thirty days free, no card. The guest app is in development.
Occupancy
82%
This month
₦2.4m
Arrivals
6
Owing
₦310k
Revenue, last 12 weeks
Arriving today
Every listing has an operation behind it
You pay the business, and only the business
The reply comes from whoever holds the keys
Two products, each built for its own shape
Why DenHunt exists
Two complaints that turn out to be the same one.
Nigeria has no shortage of good places to stay. It has a shortage of ways to tell which ones are real.
Every attempt to fix that has been a listings site, and every listings site has the same hole in it: the listing is typed in by hand, by somebody with every reason to make it look good, and nothing about it has to stay true.
The people running these buildings have the opposite problem. Many of them run them carefully, on a group chat and a notebook, and when they are asked to prove they are trustworthy they have nothing to point at, because everything they know lives in one person's phone.
So the two problems are one problem. You cannot verify a business that keeps no records, and you cannot ask a business to keep records for a marketplace's benefit. It has to be worth doing on a Tuesday when nobody is watching.
How the model works
Four steps, and each one pays for the next. That is the whole business, and it only works in this order.
Businesses pay for software
Not for leads, and not a cut of the stay. A monthly fee for the tool that runs their operation.
They run the day inside it
Bookings, rates, availability, housekeeping, staff, money. These records stay current because the business depends on them being current.
The marketplace is those records
Publishing reveals what is already there. Nothing is typed a second time, so nothing can go stale or be invented.
Guests bring bookings back
Which makes the software worth more, which brings more businesses, which makes the marketplace worth more.
The loop only closes because one record does both jobs. Break that and it is two businesses that happen to share a logo.
Why it is hard to copy
Not because the idea is secret. Because of the order it has to be built in.
A listings site
would have to build a full management system and then persuade operators to actually run their day inside it. Listings are cheap to collect. Somebody's daily habit is not.
A management tool
would have to build consumer demand from nothing. That is a different company, with different skills, and it cannot be bought with a feature.
A directory
has no operation behind any row, so it can never say more than the person who typed it in said. Adding a verified badge does not add a fact.
The order is the moat. Operations first, and the marketplace earned from them. Data quality here is not a policy anybody has to enforce. It is a by-product of a business doing its own work properly, because the record a guest reads is the record the business runs on.
How DenHunt works
The first two are what a business already does every day, just somewhere better. The third is the part nobody else can offer, because it is not an export.
Properties, units, rates, photos, house rules. This is the record. There is no separate listing to fill in afterwards, and there never will be.
Take bookings, assign rooms, raise turnovers, record payments, pay staff. The record stays current because your Tuesday depends on it being current.
One switch. Guests see the same room, the same rate and the same free nights you are working from. Not a copy of them, and not a nightly sync of them.
Lagoon Court, Studio 2
₦45,000 a night. Free 12 to 15 Aug.
One record
The business sees
Its calendar, its rate, its housekeeping
A guest sees
The listing, the same price, the same nights
Nobody types the listing a second time, so it cannot quietly disagree with reality. Change the rate on Tuesday and the marketplace already knows.
A property cannot exist on the marketplace without a business running it. There is no form that creates one, on any plan, for anybody.
The rate a guest is quoted is the rate in the calendar, because they are the same field. Nothing has to be pushed anywhere for that to be true.
Nobody updates two systems and forgets the second. There is no second. That is a workload argument for the operator and a trust argument for the guest, from one decision.
This is why trust here is not a marketing claim. Nobody is promising to police listings. The architecture makes the dishonest version impossible to build, which is a much better guarantee than a badge and a moderation team.
For shortlet and hostel businesses
Most businesses we meet are running on a group chat, a notebook and a spreadsheet only one person understands. It works until it does not: a double booking, a cleaner who never got told, a month nobody can reconcile.
Two guests can never be given the same room for the same night. That is enforced by the database itself, not by a check somebody might forget to run.
What is full, what is empty, what came in and what is still owed. Reports you can hand to an accountant, in naira, with every payment recorded and never quietly edited.
Managers, front desk and cleaners each get exactly what their job needs. A cleaner at one address never sees a conversation about another.
Turnovers raised from the checkout that caused them, assigned to a person, and visible on a phone at the property rather than on a whiteboard in an office.
Guests and staff talk inside DenHunt, so what was agreed survives the phone it was agreed on. Nobody has to scroll a personal chat history to find out what was promised.
Record what a guest paid and how. Log what the place costs to run. See the two against each other per property, per month, without a spreadsheet.
Bookings and calendar
Two guests can never be given the same room on the same night, because the database refuses it. That is the difference between a rule and a hope.
An overlapping stay is refused by the database, not by the form.
Money
A recorded payment is never edited. Corrections are new entries, so last month says the same thing today as it did yesterday, and an accountant can follow it.
Collected
₦2,410,000
Outstanding
₦310,000
Expenses
₦486,000
A recorded payment is never edited. Corrections are new entries, so last month stops moving while you read it.
Publishing
What a guest sees is not an advert you typed a second time. It is the same room, the same rate and the same nights you already work from, which is why it cannot quietly go out of date.
Published to the marketplace
Guests can find Lagoon Court and enquire
How it appears to a guest
Lagoon Court
Lekki Phase 1, Lagos
₦45,000 / night
The same room, the same rate, the same availability. It is one record, not a listing typed in twice.
Plans from ₦20,000 a month. Two months free on the year.
Student hostels
Hostels run on sessions rather than nights, on beds rather than units, and on school fees that arrive in pieces from a parent who is not the person living there. So this side of DenHunt has its own shape rather than being bent out of a shortlet tool. Students find their hostel the same way anyone finds a shortlet.
Beds
16
Taken
10
Arrears
₦140k
Bed spaces, not units. Occupancy runs across a session, and fees arrive in instalments.
For people looking for somewhere to stay
Finding a shortlet in Nigeria usually means an agent, a fee before you have seen anything, and photographs that turn out to belong to a different building. DenHunt exists so that stops being normal.
₦45,000 / night
₦72,000 / night
Inspection fee held in escrow. Refunded if the place is not as described.
₦45,000
per night
Sunplanet
Replies within an hour
Enquiry 3F2A91BC. 12 to 15 Aug, 3 nights, 2 guests, Studio.
Those dates are free. Shall I hold the studio for you?
Yes please, hold it.
Every listing belongs to a business running its operation on DenHunt. Not an advert somebody posted once, and not a photo lifted from a hotel in another country.
Where a listing offers one, the inspection fee is the renter's, held in escrow, and refunded if the home is not as described. It is never a commission on your rent.
Ask about the generator, the water, the road. The reply comes from the person responsible for the building, in a thread that stays put instead of scrolling away.
Lekki, Yaba, Wuse, Ikoyi. Filter by what you can spend and how many of you there are, and see the area on a map before you commit to anything.
Where an inspection fee goes
On listings that ask for one
You pay the inspection fee
Into escrow. Not to an agent, and not to the host.
You go and see it
The business shows you the actual place, on a booked slot.
Then one of two things
As described, the fee is released. Not as described, you get it back.
It is your money the whole way through, and it is never a commission on what you eventually pay for the stay.
An enquiry opens a conversation with the business that runs the place. It stays on DenHunt, so what was agreed is still there next week, on both sides.
Adaeze N.
Lagoon Court
Tunde B.
Lagoon Court
Amaka Eze
Lagoon Court
Adaeze N.
VerifiedEnquiry 3F2A91BC. 12 to 15 Aug, 3 nights, 2 guests, Studio.
Those dates are free. Shall I hold the studio for you?
Yes please, hold it.
The enquiry opened this thread. It stays with the business, not on somebody's phone.
Searching, booking and talking to hosts is being built for your phone, where people actually look for somewhere to stay. Leave your email and you will hear from us on the day it is ready. Nothing else, ever.
The difference
Not a list of features. The six moments where looking for a place in Nigeria usually goes wrong, and what happens instead.
What we will not do
Written down early, because every one of them is easier to keep now than after the first quarter somebody wants to hit a number.
You pay the business for the stay. We do not put a fee between you and them and call it a service.
A property needs a real photo and a real business behind it before anyone can see it. There is no plan where that is waived.
An address left on a waitlist is used to tell that person the app is out. It is not a list to be rented.
Questions
If yours is not here, the form below reaches a person rather than a ticket queue.
Two things that fit together. It is software Nigerian shortlet and hostel businesses use to run themselves: properties, bookings, guests, staff, money. It is also where people find those places to stay. The second only works because the first is real, which is why every listing belongs to a business that is using the tools daily rather than to an advert somebody posted and forgot.
No. You deal with the business that runs the place, and DenHunt takes nothing from what you pay them. There is an inspection fee on some listings, which is the renter's fee held in escrow and refunded if the home is not as described. It is never a commission.
That the business behind a listing is a real business we have checked, and that the place is one they actually operate rather than a photo lifted from somewhere else. It does not mean we have inspected every room on every day, and we would rather say so than let the badge imply more than it is worth.
It is in development now. Join the waitlist and you will hear on the day it is ready, not before. In the meantime, businesses can sign up and run their operation on app.denhunt.com today.
Three plans, priced on how many units you keep active: Starter at twenty thousand naira a month for five, Growth at forty thousand for twenty, Pro at seventy five thousand for a hundred. Two months free if you pay for the year. Listing on the marketplace is included, not an extra.
No. Plenty of businesses run entirely on their own bookings and use DenHunt for the operation: calendar, staff, housekeeping, payments, reports. Publishing to the marketplace is a switch you turn on when you want it.
Yes. Hostels work differently from shortlets, so they have their own side of the product: rooms and beds rather than nightly stays, session-long occupancy, prospects, and payment plans that match how school fees are actually paid.
Contact
Listing your apartments, moving a hostel across, a partnership, or something that has gone wrong. All of it comes to the same place.
Want to read more first? About DenHunt or the blog.
