News

Meet BookingSync At The Vacation Rental World Summit

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On October, 29th and 30th, meet BookingSync at the Vacation Rental World Summit (VRWS)!


For its 3rd edition, the international event dedicated to vacation rental is settling in Barcelona, Spain. With participants coming from almost 50 different countries, this year’s meeting promises to be successful.

The show was created by Antonio Bortolotti, founder of Vacation Rental Secrets and the Fully Booked Formula online training program. He’s also a successful “Rentalpreneur”, speaker, consultant and coach.

This year, BookingSync is a Silver sponsor: our co-founder and CEO, Sébastien Grosjean and Romain Giacalone, Marketing and User Happiness Strategist, will present you their ideas and show how it is possible to add some fun to your vacation rental activity.

A little preview of our presentation:

  • Vacation Rental: the Old Way and the New Way

  • What's remaining in your way from nicely steering your activity?

  • Automation : let softwares work for you

  • Streamline your everyday work with powerful workflows

  • Ok everything goes, let’s have fun now!

  • Connected devices, what to use for vacation rental?

  • Happy customers, makes happy managers!

Participants will get a little surprise at the end of the presentation!

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram to get our pictures of the event in real time.

If you are to attend the event, feel free to get in touch with Sébastien or Romain directly on LinkedIn to get an appointment on site.

We can’t wait to share with you, will you be there?

Widen Your Distribution Thanks To Outswitch, RentalsUnited & BookingPal

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It is now possible to distribute your properties beyond the 4 main stakeholders with which an official BookingSync partnership is available (Airbnb, Homeaway, TripAdvisor, Booking), thanks to one of our brand new partners via our App Center.

Three new partnerships were introduced this summer: Outswitch, BookingPal and RentalsUnited. Dependind on your rentals catalogue, you’ll be able to distribute them on the most relevant and effective portals in order to maximise your occupancy rate and profitability.

Outswitch


Advertising properties at the right price every night is key to achieving profit potential.  Outswitch is a sophisticated, yet easy to use, yield management platform tailored specifically for professional vacation rental managers, that optimizes prices and occupancy rates in order to maximize rental income. Successful managers are outperforming the competition and seeing between 20% to 40% increase in their revenues from using Outswitch. Beyond directly improving their bottom line, they're also growing their portfolios by attracting property owners with advanced smart pricing services.

Key features
  • Pricing optimization relies on an intelligent algorithm that takes the time and guesswork out of pricing short-term rentals, automating price variations to match market demand, and reacting in real time to occupancy rates while giving full control to property managers to configure the parameters. Performance reports and color coded functions empower managers with real time insights and alerts to take smart actions.

  • Outswitch is a complete yield manager that goes beyond price optimization to offer advanced strategies to maximize income. For example, the platform allows professional property managers  to control other equally important variables such as min stays to prioritize longer bookings and reduce costs significantly.

  • Outswitch eliminates the need for manual entry by integrating with the best property management systems on the market to automatically import properties and bookings. It also connects with the major channels  (such as  Airbnb, Booking, Agoda, and TripAdvisor) to push optimized prices daily and automate calendars sync.

BookingPal

BookingPal is a cloud-based travel technology company providing the vacation rental and holiday letting industry with a global distribution platform that features real-time connectivity between the leading property management software systems and top consumer travel websites in the world like Expedia, HomeAway, Booking.com, AirBnB, etc.

Key features

The BookingPal platform offers Vacation Rental Managers and Property Owners superior revenue generating opportunities by utilizing proprietary products to optimize distribution capabilities such as:

  • myOptimize: Scores the listing quality via its proprietary algorithm and provides key feedback to achieve optimal channel placement and conversion.

  • myInquiry:  Provides Property Managers an option to have a virtual Front Desk wherein a qualified team of agents handle all guest reservation communications 24/7 within an hour.

  • myBookingPay: Provides Property Managers an option of having BookingPal act as merchant of record in the event they are unable to process payments.

  • myTravelAgent: Allows Travel Agents unprecedented access to exclusive Vacation Rental inventory.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Irvine, California, BookingPal seamlessly connects over 180,000 rentals located on 5 continents, from 10 different property management software systems to over 35 online global consumer travel websites and the travel agent industry.

RentalsUnited

Founded in 2013, Rentals United is a latest generation distribution platform for vacation rentals. Today, it allows 210,000 properties to sell more nights via 50+ niche and global websites. Rentals United allows property managers and owners to advertise on top selling websites worldwide, from OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia, to Vacation Rentals Websites like Airbnb and HomeAway, meta searches like Tripping.com, and wholesalers like Hotelbeds.

Property managers and owners often choose to use Rentals United through a connected Property Management System (PMS) like BookingSync: when a booking is made, availability is updated by Rentals United everywhere at once. When the property manager changes nightly prices in their PMS, those prices are changed everywhere at once too. Rentals United highly complex platform which is really easy to use and handles tons of data everyday, is now one of the leading channel managers in the vacation rental market.

Key features
  • booking and revenue dashboard

  • detailed information about how each channel works, help center with videos and how-to's

  • account manager's help to set you up with 50+ channels to work with (niche and global)

Facebook Live For Vacation Rental

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If you don’t know Facebook Live yet, this article’s made for you!

The live video sharing feature was recently implemented by Facebook and is already a big hit among the users and brands using the biggest social network.


With more than 1.7 billion active users, it presents a huge potential! It’s now up to you to enjoy it, and develop your online brand.

Why choosing Facebook Live?
  • It’s been proved that Facebook Live videos tend to involve users at a higher rate than pre-recorded videos: up to 10x more comments and 3x as much time spent watching your videos, compared to regular ones.

  • A bigger impact. As Facebook’s algorithm processes Live videos differently, you’ll appear in priority in the users’ newsfeed and people liking your page will also receive a notification.

  • A new way to share. Unlike pre-recorded videos, that may seem too formal or lack spontaneity, Live videos bring users closer to the one sharing them. As comments are posted live, it’s then possible to discuss and exchange together. That’s a real opportunity to strengthen your contacts’ trust towards your brand!

What should you share on Facebook Live?
  • An event taking place close to your properties, or their region. A festival, a concert, fireworks… There are lots of examples and opportunities for you to share what happens in your region, and what makes it so attractive. Show your potential guests they won’t get bored if they choose to travel with you!

  • Interview a team member. Show travelers what’s happening behind the scenes of your guestrooms, cottage or rentals. Again, this is a perfect way to gain trust amongst your potential guests.

  • Feature a partner company’s or craftsperson's activity (vineyard, bakery, etc.). This is a good way to build your image and make yourself known, especially if the partner does the same with your vacation rentals.

  • Share privileged moments highlighting your properties (swimming pool, sunset in your garden, encountering wild animals…), to be chosen depending on your rentals’ characteristics.

  • Give an overview of your region’s tourist sites. A museum, sports activities, a landscape, give your travelers 1,000 reasons to choose you.

How do I access Facebook Live?
  • Verify your page. Follow Facebook’s instructions and you should receive your confirmation within 24 hours.

  • Ensure you have updated your Facebook app. As your goal is to share live videos, it can only be done with a mobile device (which means it’s not accessible from your computer). Once it is done, you’ll find the option by clicking on Publish on your page, and then Share Live video.

You’re now live!

To get the best feedback and audience, you should follow these simple, yet effective advice:

Even though people watching your video expect you to be spontaneous and open, you should still prepare a little bit ahead of time what you will say and show.

Let the users know about your upcoming video a few days ahead, with a reminder on the same day.

Ask questions, answer the people watching you and also, make sure the video is long enough to receive the biggest visibility possible.

Social networks keep evolving but if you know how to use them the right way, it will be positive to your business. Simple, quick and easy to use, networks are a true gold mine when it comes to free advertising on internet!