Today is a new chapter for BookingSync.

I'm Sebastien, the CEO and Founder of BookingSync and I would like to tell you a story…

where everything started…

It's back on 6th June 2003, and around midnight, my parents receive a phone call.
On the other side of the line, a lady tells them that the life of their child is in danger…and we don't know where he is. At this moment, as any parent you can imagine their entire world collapsed. Everything was at stake, nothing else relevant.

To put back in context, luckily they already had very successful vacation rental businesses they started about 20 years ago in France. First in the Alps buying lands, building chalets and renting them. Further down the road, they also replicated the same in south of France in Provence: they were able to buy lands, build some properties and rehabilitate some others, and again put them in short-term rentals.
Luckily, these two businesses were very successful and they had the financial freedom and the time to be able to do whatever it took to save my life, which of course I'm eternally grateful for.

From there, a couple years forward they started a new project in Greece and when they were about to launch it, they realized that the main acquisition channel which was Tourism Offices in France sadly didn't exist in Greece!

At this point, we started to think about the outcome, what is the solution, how can we fix that problem?
We realized that the need was websites: you needed to advertise on different platforms as we know them today such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and so much more…
My parents were not very tech savvy, I was lucky that I had done my studies in IT. As you understood, this business that saved my life, along with the love of my parents that built this activity, and was behind everything that made me here today, there was no other option for me than going there and helping them!
I flew to Greece, stopped what I was doing and came to help out with their business. I quickly realized that updating calendars by clicking on buttons every day, because you have to mark your calendar daily, or in some cases twice a day per listing, to say that “yes my calendar is up to date” would put us back on top of the site search ranking.
Yet, I was living in a paradise, it was amazing, beautiful greek islands in front of me, very nice landscape, my family was around…but i was clicking buttons all day long!

Very quickly, I automated the process, and that's what became BookingSync, the first channel manager of the vacation rental industry.

Few years later, we grew way beyond this: in September 2021 we were nominated by Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia as the world's best connectivity partner! The only one to have the highest level of partnership with the three of them in the whole hospitality industry, and that's an amazing job achieved by our entire team. Thanks a lot to our customers and partners who made this possible.

Now, as you understood, BookingSync is way more than just synchronizing bookings today: we also help with guest communication, whether that’s centralizing everything in one place or automating your communication with your own brand, we also help with payments by collecting them and ensuring there is no fraud. We also help with increasing your revenue, in average around 40% more. That's a lot of tooling that we have built, a lot of services that are still under the name of BookingSync.
BookingSync was a brand name that was created from what we do, which is synchronizing bookings, yet it doesn't fit anymore with what we're doing now…

That's why today, I'm very happy to announce that we are renaming to a brand called "Smily”.

Why Smily?
Because we transition not only from “what we do” but “why” we are doing it.

Why Smily?
Because we believe in sharing smiles: between a traveler and an owner, a traveler and a property manager, a property manager and an owner, within your teams, with family,  friends, within yourself… It's really why we exist.

We want to make sure that every day you share smiles and you enjoy life so fully that you can thrive and enjoy. That's why we exist and why we want to be your partner.
That's why Smily, as we're going to name it for every single product that we have, is going to be the driver behind anything we do.
It's already the case but that brand name will nurture and keep us aligned with what we care about, why we do what we do and why we want to be in business with you.
We look forward to working with you under that new name, Smily, and to keep learning how we can make your life even better every day, how we can ensure that you enjoy life to the fullest, how we can ensure that the travelers that come to your properties have an outstanding guest experience!
 
Thank you for joining us in this new era, Smily, and we look forward to helping you even further.

Cheers,
Sébastien Grosjean
Founder & CEO

L’équipe BookingSync est ravie d'être le partenaire technologique de Veepee voyage (ex Vente-Privée) pour la création de sa catégorie Location saisonnière et d’offrir une nouvelle plateforme prometteuse à ses clients avec : la plateforme de réservation Veepee voyage by BookingSync et Smily !
C'est pour vous une superbe opportunité d'accéder à un canal de distribution directe et à une audience de qualité grâce aux 27 millions de membres Veepee en France.

La location saisonnière et Veepee voyage

La location saisonnière est une toute nouvelle ligne de produits chez Veepee voyage, développée en réponse à une forte attente de ses membres et qui est le parfait complément aux lignes de produits déjà disponibles sur Veepee voyage : séjours, résidences, clubs, hôtels, Parcs de Loisir.
Veepee voyage souhaite couvrir chaque territoire et chaque type de biens : ville, campagne, montagne et bord de mer en proposant des biens de qualité disponibles toute l’année avec un service irréprochable aux membres. La confiance et la fidélité de ses membres se basent sur la décote et la qualité des offres, critères pour lesquels Veepee voyage a choisi de faire confiance à BookingSync/Smily et à ses Property Managers !

Les points forts de ce partenariat pour nos Property Managers

• Partenariat technique avec BookingSync pour vous garantir une utilisation simple et commune à vos autres canaux. Aucun risque de double réservation.
• La force marketing de Veepee voyage : vos propriétés seront mises en avant par des bannières thématiques sur le site Veepee voyage qui redirigeront les membres vers la thématique correspondante sur le site Veepee by BookingSync (par exemple “Bord de Mer”, “Bretagne”...).
• Le client devient votre client direct après la réservation. Les coordonnées du membre Veepee voyage vous sont partagées pour chaque nouvelle réservation.
• Vous encaissez directement le paiement, via la passerelle de paiement reliée à votre compte BookingSync et générez ainsi de la trésorerie.
• Les frais Veepee voyage sont à la performance. Vous ne payez pas de frais fixes ni de coût au clic.
• Vous maîtrisez votre ROI sur le canal Veepee voyage avec une totale connaissance des coûts d'acquisition.
• Vos conditions de réservation sont présentées et validées par le client avant la réservation (n'oubliez pas que des conditions d'annulation flexibles semblent être un critère toujours important pour les voyageurs)

Le partenariat est à ce jour uniquement lancé sur le site français de Veepee voyage  mais il est prévu de l’étendre aux autres sites européens de Veepee voyage.

Vous souhaitez commencer à promouvoir vos propriétés sur le site Veepee voyage by BookingSync ?

Consultez notre page de manuel pour connaître la procédure :)

Nous espérons que cette solution vous permettra de générer de nouvelles réservations et de faire connaître vos biens aux 27 millions de français membres de Veepee voyage !
Nous remercions Veepee voyage de la confiance accordée et nous vous assurons être à vos côtés pour faire de cette reprise une réussite suite à cette période extrêmement difficile.

Prenez soin de vous,

The City of Paris may be celebrating victory against property owners summoned over their seasonal rental activity following the judgement delivered by the Court of Justice of the European Union on 22nd September 2020; however the battle is far from being won. 
Under the judgement of 22 September 2020, the European Court retained that “A national regulation authorising rental in a repetitive manner of a premises destined for habitation for short durations to occasional customers [...] is compliant to the laws of the Union as long as it is justified by an overriding reason relating to the public interest and in keeping with the fight against the shortage of housing destined for rental.”

In other words, with this judgement the European Court has validated in principle the national French legislation in the way in which it frames seasonal rental of secondary residences. However, it still invites the Court of Cassation to adjudicate on the merit of the parisien compensation mechanism implemented by the City of Paris

At the same time, the Court is also inviting all national jurisdictions to examine more closely the conformity of compensation plans put in place by their affected communes in terms of the European criteria that have been emphasised by its decision.
In order to better understand, it is necessary to briefly highlight the context of the seisin of the European Court, before presenting an analysis, clarified by the fixed conditions of this seisin.

More than ever before, we want to help you increase the traffic to your own website and get more direct bookings!

Different methods and tools exist for this but one great option is online advertisement through your social networks and digital campaigns!

Managing this is not an easy task and it requires some skills to make sure you target the right audience, at the right moment and in the right place.

Today we are very happy to announce our new partnership with a company which can help you to improve and boost your online presence > Metricool! You will find more details below on the webinar we organize with them on Tuesday October 6th.

We are today very happy to announce our new partnership with Smart Locks provider, Nuki !

Installing a Smart Lock on your properties’ doors will allow you to provide your guests with access to the property remotely and therefore give them autonomy and flexibility to get into their accomodation.  

No need to be on site any more, managing accesses will be done in a secure and automated way. Some travelers might also appreciate the fact that you offer a 0-touch check-in process and you can still control who can get into your property.

We know that proceeding with your guest verifications can be very complex due to regulations that are constantly evolving and depending on your local authorities. Moreover, your guests might really appreciate a fully online check-in process, which will not only save you time but also avoid physical contact for checking your travelers in!

Therefore, in order to address these problems, we are today very pleased to announce our new partner CheKin (don't miss out our co-organized webinar this Thursday September 10th - see details at the end of this email)!

During this challenging time, it is more important than ever to diversify sources for acquiring new bookings. But it is perhaps also an opportunity to think about new ways to rent out your properties and to welcome your future guests. Today, we are very happy to announce a new partnership with the channel Flatio, a platform specializing in mid-term rentals.

The COVID crisis has caused our industry a lot of troubles and changes but we are happy that this challenging time has also allowed us to be even more connected with our partners!

We have conducted co-organized webinars with some of our partners that you can watch on our Youtube channel.

Some partners have also created amazing resources for Property Managers and all vacation rental industry stakeholders to be up to date with the situation, adapt our strategy and be ready for a new future.

Quite a few partner companies are also running promotions or giving free access to their product or some features to help Property Managers overcome these new challenges. 

We wanted to share with you in this article a list of resources and offers per partner. 

Please note that you can find out more about each partner on our App Center page.

Our CEO & founder Seb Grosjean and our head of Product Maud Lavolée also took part as speakers in the webinars organized by AJL consulting and BookingPal.

From the BookingSync team we would like to address a huge THANK YOU to our partners for showing solidarity during this hard time. We are proud to be part  of this wonderful Vacation Rental community and are looking forward to contributing to a new and better future for our industry!

As you may know, solidarity in order to help people in need of temporary housing, sharing supporting videos, applause for healthcare staff, crafting masks, grocery services for isolated people etc... is organizing everywhere to help in our way fighting against COVID-19. On our side, we are very proud to highlight & support some of those great programs in the vacation rental industry and give you the key information if you wish to participate.

How can I join the help?

Hello new remote workers and managers!

There will be a before and an after COVID-19… this crisis that is turning us upside down, both in our personal and professional lives. We are having to adapt, change our behaviour, take care of loved ones, reassure ourselves and, in terms of work, some of us are having to learn to work from home, to manage a team remotely, to collaborate whilst staying productive and motivated. Not easy - but we can help you!

At Smily and BookingSync, a technology company that builds software for managing seasonal rentals, we have a 100% remote working model, meaning that everybody has been working remotely every day (from home or from a coworking space) ever since the company launched in 2014.

There are 40 of us working for the company, distributed across 17 countries.

So working remotely and being productive (even more so), motivated and collaborative with colleagues or managing teams without seeing each other is possible!

There’s no doubt that moving to a 100% remote team from one day to the next is a huge challenge. That is why we would like to share with you the tools that we use, our best practises and the things that we have learnt from working as a remote team for the last 6 years.