Since 2010, BookingSync has been helping you save time and book more. Following what we initiated a few months ago on our blog, we want to give YOU a chance to speak and share your vision of the vacation rental industry and experience.

We’ve talked today with Aurélien, co-founder of Luckey Homes, a French property management and housekeeping company, using BookingSync since 2015.

Here is what we discussed.

Aurélien, how do you explain your success, despite the increased competition?

I think we’re characterised by 2 things: bringing a good quality of service for a reasonable commission rate for our owners.

We’ve set up City Managers, ensuring the same quality of service everywhere in France. When joining Luckey Homes, we provide them with tools helping them efficiently manage their properties portfolio. This helps us grow fast in several regions and on little markets, such as in Montpellier or Marseille, where there’s little competition.

We’ve also created the LuckeySchool, helping us standardise our quality of service nationwide and put in common our good practice and City Managers’ experience.

What’s different with Luckey Homes?

We’ve decided to bring a very technical approach and put a lot of efforts into developing apps and features -internally, as much as for the owners and our City Managers.

We take advantage of what can be automated thanks to new technologies, in order to get efficient processes, hence offering a low commission rate thanks to the time saved.

We’ve had a lot of internal development to create work-specific processes. Thanks to BookingSync’s API (Application Programming Interface), we can use some of our features and processes further.

An app is at the owners’ disposal, allowing them to manage their properties on their own: blocking the calendar, following their revenue and exchanging with their account manager by chat.

Lastly, we’ve also added a new advantage for our owners: a Groupama insurance contract, covering up to 1.5 million €, for each housing we manage.

How do you see it evolving, especially regarding the short term rental regulations?

Paris is different from the rest of the country. We support the regulations that were set up in Paris, that help regulate the market and limit the offer, and tend to lower the prices.

To the contrary, we think those regulations are less relevant in other province cities, as it would restrict this activity that has a good effect on the local economy.

How do you address the hospitality and “living like a local” challenges, while managing properties in the owners’ place?

Well, with some hindsight now, we notice not all travelers expect a warm and personalised welcome -e.g, professionals on a business trip- but the ones expecting such a welcome have great expectations.

Locally, we work a lot with students -our Welcomers- that help during the check-in. That allows travelers to be in contact with locals that know the city and can share their good addresses.

What are the greatest challenges you’re facing in the industry?

This is a time-consuming, never-ending activity if we wish to be here for our owners and travelers.

I’d say today’s challenge is for everyone in the team to get to protect themselves and take the necessary time and distance to keep the good mood we’re sharing today and the pleasure to be working in the tourism industry.

Each client is particular and has a different approach of the vacation rental industry. We, at BookingSync, chose to offer an open API allowing our clients to make the most of our technology serving their clients.

You can contact Luckey Homes too, for your vacation rentals management!