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.

In this difficult context, we are working hard to keep on innovating and working hard to deliver you more value. Therefore, we are today happy to announce our new partner: Transparent Intelligence, a short term rental data provider benchmarking for 32+ million listings worldwide.

Search engines are increasingly used by travelers! They make their life easier and offer the best price for vacation rentals that best meets their needs.

We had the chance to attend the Booking.com Connectivity Hackathon, held in Zoku, Amsterdam, on November 25th and 26th.

The opportunity to get back on these 2 days of exchanges, reflections, design and implementation with our partner Booking.com on a project that is particularly important to us, developing a new standard to define the level of eco-responsibility for vacation rentals.

Why did we choose a project on sustainable tourism?

The difference between the first hackathon proposed by Booking.com and other hackathons we have already had the chance to attend, is that there is no directive, no theme, no constraint, not on the subject nor on the technical side. This really opens up a lot of possibilities, but now, which project to submit?

We asked ourselves several questions: what project would make Booking.com stand out from other OTAs? What opportunities are there in our industry in constant motion? Could we find a common interest that we could serve with this project?

If you follow us for some time, it will not have passed you by that humanitarian, social and environmental commitment is part of our DNA andbecoming a leader in the development of sustainable tourism, and local communities is one of our dreams.

For its part, Booking.com has already been involved in eco-friendly tourismthrough several initiatives:

• Booking.com is the only OTA that offers a section dedicated to eco-friendly gestures, encourage guests to "adopt sustainable practices so that travelers discover a planet worth exploring".

We are proud to have been selected to attend the Booking.com Hackathon in Amsterdam on November 25th and 26th with our project: a new standard for Sustainable Rentals.

Tired of the hassles of cancellation insurance and damage deposits?

We are happy to introduce Safebooking : the cancellation and multiple-risk insurance for vacation rentals that will simplify your life!

We are happy to introduce LuggageHero, the best way to securely store your guest’s luggage!

We are happy to introduce Key Data : the perfect solution for evaluating, predicting, examining your rental performance!

What is Key Data?

It provides clear, easy to understand visibility into all the core metrics that drive your vacation rental business. This intelligent and benchmarking tool helps you examine the future performance and compare it side by side with your today and last year’s performance. It’s the industry’s only direct-source data that shows you how you build up to competitors in the market.

It can be complicated to find your way through the jungle of events dedicated to property management. So because at BookingSync we like to make your life easier, we have put together a list of those you shouldn't miss this fall.

Click.2019

September 10-11 / Amsterdam