Numa’s STR Third Model Transforming Urban Hospitality

Short-term rentals and hotels are converging into a single operating model.

The real shift is not about category. It is about who can deliver better economics, better experience, and better scalability in urban markets.

In this episode, Simon Lehmann sits down with Christian Gaiser to break down how Numa built a hybrid model between short-term rentals and hotels, and why that model is gaining traction as the industry matures.

Christian Gaiser is the CEO and Co-Founder of Numa, one of Europe’s fastest-growing urban hospitality platforms. With a background in building digital platforms and scaling operations, he brings a product and technology mindset into a traditionally fragmented industry. At Numa, he has led the development of a tech-driven, asset-light model designed to operate across cities with high efficiency and consistency.

This conversation moves beyond the STR vs hotel debate and focuses on operating models, automation, distribution strategy, regulation, and how technology is reshaping both supply and demand in hospitality.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Numa was built around three structural gaps in hospitality, demand outpacing supply, fragmented assets, and a lack of technology across operations.
• How the “third model” combines short-term rentals, hotels, and serviced apartments into a single system driven by guest use cases rather than categories.
• Why capital efficiency and financial discipline became a competitive advantage after the
  collapse of overfunded STR models.
• How Numa captures both short and long stay demand while maintaining lower costs through density, standardized units, and lean operations.
• Why building more than 100 internal tools became central to improving reviews, reducing costs, and scaling operations.
• How labor shortages, including a projected 8 million workforce gap in Germany, are forcing operators to rethink staffing and automation.
• Why AI will reshape both operations and demand, increasing travel activity and changing how supply is discovered and consumed.