MyVR (YC W12) raises $1.4M to attack the vacation rental industry
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
In Europe people have rented out holiday homes for as long as I know. There are some big incumbents in the market, this one for example: http://www.novasol.co.uk/
Novasol specialise in the Germanic, Scandinavian and Eastern European.
The problem myvr will have isn't just persuading advertisers that they can deliver customers (margins are slim and they can only afford to advertise in one place), but also to convince holidaymakers that the risk is virtually non-existent.
That's one of the things the incumbents work hard on, visiting every property each year and auditing it to ensure that it is as advertised and hasn't dropped in standard, and that all of the safety things (contracts, insurance) are in place.
We're primarily focused on the US & Canada right now, though we do have customers elsewhere.
One distinction to make is that we're not like the "incumbents" you mention. We're more like property management software (or "property marketing" might be closer). We're not trying to build a destination site and attract renters to it. Our goal is to make it easier for an owner to market across these types of places.
Tactically speaking, we go out and vertically integrate anywhere meaningful to vacation rental marketing, and allow an owner to upload their home info once and then simply click to opt into whatever channels they want. They get to manage it all in one place and everything stays in sync (no more juggling multiple calendars, rate tables, etc).
So, think of us like the DSP's that emerged to help advertisers deal with all the various ad networks that popped up. It's a pain in the ass to go integrate with all of them. For now, we're launching with the major listing sites (similar to the incumbents you mention) in the US. We also provide the other several other helpful marketing tools - their own website, their own Facebook Page (a great 'CRM' tool, if you will), auto-responders, Craigslist ad poster, etc...
I think that's quite different than what the incumbents are doing... They're a vertical. We'll never aim to be a vertical.
Most of the incumbents I know of in Europe are effectively paid-for directory businesses that in essence provide listings (and then booking, and all of the dull contractual stuff).
My question would be: How will you be able to get your listings inserted into their databases if the barrier to being in their database is a payment?
Is your aim to become a re-seller for the existing sites? So you'd be a one-stop-shop for getting your holiday home listed in the places most likely to convert.
Or more that you hope to encourage the incumbents to take your feed through other enticements (such as being able to take a commission on properties that would normally have been listed elsewhere)?
Yep, that's it exactly.
The selling point to them is that we bring them new customers. We're seeing that owners aren't marketing as they should because everything they do is incremental work and upkeep. If we can make launching into a new channel (or listing site) as easy as a click, and centralize the management of it all, we believe owners will increase their marketing. It helps that we can also bring large quantities to the listing sites, so that we can also get discounts for our owners (a further incentive to increase their marketing).
Particularly if you can break the annual or 2-yearly contracts and allow owners to experiment with different listing sites for short periods of time (monthly listings).
This is even more compelling if you are the ones centrally managing the visibility of availability across the listing sites (so if a booking is made via site A the unavailability is reflected on site B).
The fear in making a bad marketing decision for a small holiday home owner is real. Their margins being small they can only afford 1 listing usually, 2 at a push. But just as with Open Table and restaurants, the home owner isn't really sure whether it works, or if it does whether it works better than other alternatives. Giving them the ability to see this stuff would solve a real pain point for them and truly make them happier.
Unfortunately, for some of the smaller listing sites they're likely to go out of business. In somewhere like the Lake District in the North West of England, there are about 5 or 6 listing sites but only 1 or 2 that really work... as soon as home owners have visibility of this the smaller ones are likely to sink very quickly.
Of course, this is to the advantage of home owners, but I wonder whether the smaller listings sites will see the big picture and realise that your solution is good for everyone but them. Not that they deserve to survive when all they sell is fear and very little real marketing power.