Exciting Opportunities Ahead
Dear Vacation Rental Property Manager / Fellow Entrepreneurs:
I have really enjoyed meeting many of you at past Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) conferences; perhaps I'll see you at the upcoming conference in San Diego later this month. If we haven't met, please let me introduce myself. I'm Steve Murch, and at the beginning of this year, I was elected Chairman of Escapia Inc. (www.escapia.com).
Over the past six months, you may have noticed some changes at Escapia.
In April, we brought in a terrific new CEO, Bill Furlong, who I've known for 15 years now. In addition to his experience at Microsoft, Cranium, and Mountain Travel Sobek, Bill has very pertinent experience leading a travel company, and knows what it's like to run a reservation desk, operations, guest relations, finance and accounting. He is listening actively to your needs and acting on them, and I think you'll enjoy getting to know him over the coming years.
We added over $2 million in funding to the company. In addition, this summer, we welcomed many new clients, our technical staff has improved performance in the system dramatically, we improved service levels several-fold, and we completed development on some great new reservation features that we announced last week. Most importantly, Bill went on a listening tour from Washington to Hawaii to New Hampshire to Florida, meeting many of you, seeing where Escapia is helping you, understanding where we're falling short, and listening to your needs.
Escapia is growing - in the past twelve months we doubled the number of clients using the platform and increased the bookings the system manages by more than 200%. And we added some great new talent to our technical staff from Microsoft and Expedia Inc.
As Chairman, lead individual investor in Escapia, and someone who has closely followed the online travel industry for more than a decade, I wanted to take a moment to outline where we're headed, as well as why I believe so strongly in Escapia's vision, platform, and services to come.
1) The Web Continues to Present Opportunities for You to Measure Better, Access New Customers, Reduce Costs and Increase Revenues
First, why is the web so important for vacation rental managers? You probably have many of your customers finding you via the web today, but it goes far beyond that.
If you use Escapia to power your business, you know much of the answer already. That's because Escapia Inc. clients today can do things that other property managers cannot. Among many other benefits, you can access critical business functions from anywhere at any time - for example, this enables you to spread your reservation desk wherever you'd like, like JetBlue - or, you can easily scale it up or down with the seasons. You can also update your own website via a web browser, your website can show customers real-time availability and booking, you can do advanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from the web, and you can take reservations 24 hours a day, unattended. You don't need to spend any time synchronizing your online availability calendar with your reservation system - they are one and the same.
It's not adequate to consider the web for just "brochureware" anymore. Travel in particular is a highly networked economy, only growing more so with each month. We're listening, and we know we've got much additional work to do to satisfy all of your needs. We've got a strong development team hard at work on them, including Evan Gull, co-founder of First Resort Software, and some senior talent with Microsoft, IBM, NASA and Sun pedigrees.
So here's the exciting thing -- we've only scratched the surface on what's possible.
2) A Peek at Our Future Together
For competitive reasons, I don't want to share our full plans in great detail, but let me say this: Expect your Escapia dashboard to get more and more powerful as a source of efficiency, measurement and new revenue. We will continue to build depth to the core "back office" functions you count on Escapia to provide - reservations processing, accounting, housekeeping, work orders and more. Beyond that, you're going to be able to measure leads and conversions more accurately, you're going to be able to get more revenue from each sale, you're going to be able to set your rates more effectively with unprecedented decision support capabilities, and you're going to be able to access new customers, new distribution channels, and new partnerships for your inventory.
By committing to a web-based platform, and by having the luxury of only one code base to work on, I can assure you that Escapia will be able to continue - even accelerate in many areas - its rapid pace of innovation. From where I sit, Escapia has a better opportunity than any other company in the market to revolutionize the way that vacation rentals are managed, found, and booked.
One key thing we've heard from you is that you'd like more help from the Web in finding new customers to fill unsold inventory, thereby increasing your overall occupancy and revenues. Further, we hear many of you saying that you often don't need a huge amount of extra help during your peak periods, but that when vacancies arise, you'd like help reaching new customers and some assistance in setting optimal price points. We've got some real breakthrough thoughts on this and you'll be hearing more about it over the coming months.
We're working to connect your Escapia platform to a global travel marketplace, accessing new customers and tapping into new revenue opportunities for you, in addition to helping you measure your business and lower your cost.
We are completely committed to your success - Our entire business strategy is built around the long-term success of independent, professional vacation rental managers. Therefore, we cannot succeed unless you, our clients, succeed.
You can contact us at any time with your thoughts and ideas at 1-800-ESCAPIA, or info@escapia.com.