Villa Balchik

A dream for many property investors is not only to build a high-end private villa in the sun, but one that returns 12% per year. Proud of their investment and set for their first season, they quickly calculated that during the three key summer months, the amount payable to OTAs such as Airbnb would total almost 7,000 Euros, which they found grotesque. As every vacation rental owner knows, the key questions began to arise: isn’t that excessive, and how else can I get bookings?

Not only was the cost unappealing but also the cashflow; OTAs take bookings in January for August and only pay out to the owner 30 days after checkout in September. Financing an entire season wasn’t appealing and made little business sense if funds could be received upon booking rather than checkout. There had to be a viable alternative, enter Quendoo.

Confident they could undertake their own marketing for much less and liking the prospect of owning the channels through which guests would be found, the decision was made to proceed with Quendoo. After a quick consultation, the owners decided to strategically retain their OTA profiles to deliver off-peak bookings only, June, July and August would be blocked out to ensure their exclusivity for their own Direct Bookings. This tactic enabled them to still take bookings off-peak when it would be harder to achieve results for themselves, plus they preserved their exposure to the wider global audience along with all their existing reviews. Ultimately, they began considering OTAs as marketing channels rather than solely booking channels, and for a 20% commission, this format felt like a fair deal.

They understood the majority of guests browsing OTAs actively seek the accommodation’s website directly and they wanted to capture and convert that overspilling traffic. So, it was essential they had the mechanism to display their real-time availability, have it simultaneously synchronised across all OTAs (via our Channel Manager) to avoid double bookings and take instant payments online via credit card. Quendoo had all the tools they required.

From the owner:

"We launched with just a Quendoo website and a EUR 20 Facebook campaign. Two days later we had our first Direct Booking for EUR 1,300 for a total conversion cost of just EUR 45, brilliant! The same booking via an OTA would have cost us EUR 260 with payment received six months later, there’s just no comparison. Now we have the tools, we have the confidence to invest in our own marketing channels and be more in control of our revenue streams.

We’re very happy with Quendoo, it really works, the support is great, it simply couldn’t be more efficient."