Overview
A full-service vacation rental property management company Vacation Rental Collective (VRC) managed about 20 properties when they adopted Escapia in 2011. Since then, VRC expanded their portfolio to 750 properties across 18 locations, with Vrbo serving as a significant distribution channel for VRC, contributing 45% of their business.
VRC’s CEO Mary Beth Miles believes that Escapia’s ability to support their business over this growth period speaks volumes about the software’s ability to support and scale with businesses of any size, at any stage.
Challenges
As VRC started to add on new vacation rental homes to their portfolio, the manual reservation management process became a significant issue for their business. Their team relied on spreadsheets to keep track of reservations and manually collected credit card details from guests, which was time-consuming and inefficient.
Despite listing properties on Vrbo since 2008, VRC lacked a centralized system for accounting, homeowner communication, and guest management across different business segments.
Solutions
Escapia’s accounting capabilities transformed VRC’s operations. With the most battle-tested accounting solution on the market, they could run the entire business through Escapia without relying on additional systems. The new, streamlined processes enabled VRC to avoid additional headcount costs for a few years while growing their portfolio.
Escapia’s Performance Dashboard also provided Mary Beth’s team with a high-level overview of revenue and occupancy rates. This became possible not only for overseeing the performance of the entire portfolio, but also separate business units and details for individual properties. Mary Beth discovered that this feature isn’t commonly found in other property management systems. As a result, larger property management companies need to conduct additional analytics to assess the performance of their individual business units.
Mary Beth finds it truly valuable that Escapia is consistently enhancing its functionalities. The new Rates Manager, for instance, simplifies pricing adjustments, provides market rate suggestions, and allows for easy implementation of various rate management strategies.
Escapia’s team worked closely with us to address our unique needs. We manage more properties than most vacation rental property management companies, and Escapia’s flexibility allowed us to tailor solutions to our portfolio, such as managing accounting and communications for individual business entities.
Since integrating with Escapia’s software solution, VRC could easily distribute inventory to multiple locations. Despite post-pandemic challenges when homestays were on a decline, VRC’s year-over-year revenue growth continued. Inventory additions played a crucial role, and Escapia’s efficiency and scalability contributed to their success, while 45% of VRC’s business came from Vrbo.
Learn more about Escapia
With over 30 years of experience, Escapia understands professional property management. Their powerful software is built on a foundation of industry knowledge, with the continued investment and innovation that comes with being part of Expedia Group.
Escapia’s comprehensive suite of tools help manage every aspect of your vacation rental property portfolio with ease. From increasing bookings to minimizing operational costs, you can rely on Escapia to grow with you for many years to come.
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