Customer Success Stories
5 min read
Cactus Coliving & Coworking is a coliving in the Canary Islands with three houses: two on Tenerife, in Valle San Lorenzo and Adeje, and one on the neighbouring island of La Gomera, five minutes from the beach. María Mayordomo founded it and runs it with a small team, including Rebeca, who looks after the La Gomera house. Guests are mostly remote workers who come for a month or more, work from the coworking rooms, and end up hiking, surfing and cooking together.
The houses mix shared rooms sold one bed at a time with private doubles. Two islands, three addresses, one team and one calendar. That is the shape of the problem, and it is why María moved Cactus onto Mangobeds in June 2025.
Each house has its own character and its own rooms:
They are separate properties with separate calendars, separate rates and separate paperwork, but they are one business, one brand and one subscription. A guest who books a month in Valle and then wants to spend two weeks in La Gomera is a normal Tuesday, not an edge case.
With Mangobeds, María manages all three locations without having to be in each one, and without losing the community that makes each house what it is.
A coliving is not a small hotel. The stays are long, the rooms are sold by the bed as often as by the room, the guests keep talking to you for weeks, and in Spain the tax office has opinions about all of it. Here is what that meant in practice for Cactus.
Cactus already had years of bookings, guests and payments behind it. We moved all of that data into Mangobeds for them in less than a week, so the calendar was full from day one and the team kept working without a pause.
Community managers run the houses day to day: check-ins, rooms, tickets, events. They do not need to see revenue. With Mangobeds, María gives each person a role that shows exactly what their job needs, so the whole team works in the same account and the financial side stays with her.
Community is the heart of Cactus. Family dinners, wine tastings and group ice baths are what bring each house together. With Mangobeds, María organises these activities easily, and any cost is added as an upsell on the guest’s booking, together with practical things like a desk monitor or a coworking pass. The team spends its time with the guests, with no payments to chase.
As a business in Spain, Cactus has to issue invoices that follow Verifactu, the new Spanish e-invoicing law, and María’s accountants had warned her it could mean changing systems. With Mangobeds, Verifactu is built in: invoices come straight from the booking and follow the new rules, with no separate invoicing tool. Guest registration for the Spanish authorities runs from the same place through the Chekin connection, so the legal admin needs no second tool and no second data entry.
Long stays mean split payments: a deposit when the guest books, the rest before arrival through the guest portal. Sometimes they also mean giving money back. María needed to refund a bank transfer and to see at a glance which bookings were already invoiced. Both are solved in Mangobeds: any cash or bank transfer payment can be marked as refunded, in full or in part, and an invoice marker shows in the bookings list, the calendar and the booking preview.
“The system is designed specifically for coliving businesses, which makes managing bookings, payments and availability much easier.”
María Mayordomo, Founder of Cactus Coliving & Coworking
Cactus needed one system for three houses on two islands, built for month-long stays and Spanish rules, and small enough to answer the phone.
Three houses, two islands, and one place to run them from.
Want more stories like this one? See how Nine Coliving keeps a small space full in the north of Tenerife, how Lava runs a surf coliving in the Azores, and how ESCAPE runs coliving in two countries. You can also read how Verifactu works inside Mangobeds.
“We’ve been using Mangobeds at Cactus Coliving for a year already, and we’ve had a very positive experience with both the platform and the team behind it. The system is designed specifically for coliving businesses, which makes managing bookings, payments and availability much easier. What we appreciate most is how responsive and supportive the team is. Whenever we have a question, need help or suggest an improvement, they listen carefully and work with us to find a solution. Mangobeds is constantly evolving. We highly recommend it to anyone looking for a reliable and user-friendly booking system.”
María Mayordomo, Founder of Cactus Coliving & Coworking
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