In a sea of software geared specifically toward them, vacation-home rental owners and property management companies are met with features, functionalities and interfaces intended to make their lives easier.
Orbirental partners with some of the leading vacation property rental websites in attempt to put themselves at the top of the long list of similar offerings. The San Francisco-based company is currently backed by one single angel investor.
Property owners and agencies know how challenging it can be to maintain consistent and efficient communication between leads while managing scheduling, among many other tasks. Orbirental is hoping to eliminate some of those arduous tasks.
The lead management application launched April 22. Connecting with VRBO, HomeAway, Airbnb and Flipkey, Orbirental is both a property management application as well as an analytics tool.
Orbirental is a two-sided market that fits into the needs of both rental property owners and vacation rental agencies. It offers four different packages for agencies that range in price from $9.99 a month to $149.99 a month, depending on the amount of properties and features desired.
Property owners can use the free service from Orbirental, which includes site integration, publishing tools and a easy-to-use calendar solution.
“The core differentiator of the product is what we call the pipeline, a visual dashboard that is backed by a complex automation engine, keeping track of all vacation rental flows, automatically changing statuses when needed, and sending timely notifications to all stakeholders in the process,” said Stephan Osmont, technical and product adviser at Orbirental.
According to the company, after three months of using Orbirental conversion rates increase by 27 percent, due in part to the ability for users to respond quickly — 34 percent faster, to be exact. Additionally, Orbirental says occupancy increases by 18 percent year over year when using the application.
Orbirental acts as a lead consolidation portal to assist in prioritizing and processing leads within a single interface. Users can confirm availability and current rates, touch base with templated responses and process payments.
“You have to do things in a timely manner. A lot of the portals like Airbnb and HomeAway are stressing the fact that people need to respond right away. What we’re doing is simplifying and automating some of the tasks people do on a daily basis to streamline their process,” Osmont said.
The technology behind the product is intended to help throughout the entire process, with available automation. Additionally, the analytics feature is available for users to track performance throughout their organization.
“We have a lot of data that we process,” Osmont said. “You can analyze properties by the number of leads and sales revenue, and do a comparative analysis of different properties. Big teams can see which agents are closing the most deals, and you can see how long it takes for a booking to process from start to finish. There are a lot of things you can play with to improve your processes.”
Orbirental is excited to fill the void for vacation property owners after HomeAway eliminated its free calendar about six months ago. Next up is a calendar delegation feature that will work on both sides of the market and help to streamline the booking and scheduling capabilities between property owners and agencies.
