Quest Serviced Apartments 
Smart50 rank: 49
Revenue: $198 million
Growth: 19.04%
Founders: Paul Steve Constantinou, 53
Based: Victoria
Employees: 1700
Industry: Accommodation, cafes and restaurants
Website: www.questapartments.com.au
Continuing strong revenue growth has helped serviced apartments business Quest build and maintain a position as one of Australia’s strongest franchise businesses.
Winner of the NAB Top Franchise Award in the 2007 SmartCompany Awards, Quest has had another good year with growth of 19.04% across 2006-07 to 2007-08 to revenue of $198 million. Revenue in the previous year was $177.7 million.
Quest’s online strategy has been a strong factor in its recent growth, with the replacement of a standard email query form with an online booking system in 2005 resulting in a 60% lift in online accommodation bookings.
A crucial juncture in the growth of the business was its decision to move to a full franchise model after realising that franchise properties were constantly outperforming company owned ones.
Selling profitable company owned franchises and allowing giving high performing franchisees the opportunity to expand helped spur faster growth improve the quality of the accommodation offer to customers.
“We certainly took the business to a new level when we strategically set out to become 100% franchised,” founder Paul Constantinou says.
