US: Portland-based vacation rental management platform Vacasa has announced the release of its homeowner app connecting homeowners with insights into the management, care and performance of their vacation rental home.
The Vacasa Homeowner app is seen as a key addition to Vacasa’s suite of technologies to professionalise the vacation rental experience for homeowners and guests, and drive efficiency in home care operations.
Mike Xenakis, chief product officer of Vacasa, said: “The number-one requested product from our homeowners was a mobile app to monitor the management and performance of their home. We built our Vacasa Homeowner app based on direct feedback and input from our customers, simplifying their ownership experience and providing greater peace of mind around the management of their homes.
“This is a great example of how our product team of nearly 200 data scientists, engineers, product managers, and designers help Vacasa provide custom, industry-leading tools for our homeowners that few other vacation rental management companies can offer,” he added.
Founded in 2009, Vacasa has developed its own technology ecosystem that is purpose-built to elevate the vacation rental experience for homeowners. From patented technologies like its home care scheduler algorithms, to leading yield management systems for optimising homeowner revenue, Vacasa technologies are designed to address the specific needs of vacation rental homeowners, guests, and its employees.
Vacasa CEO Matt Roberts said: “At our core, Vacasa is a technology company focused on improving our homeowners’ experience, making our guests’ vacations more enjoyable, and increasing operational efficiencies. Looking ahead, we plan to triple our investment in advancing our end-to-end technology platform through the cash proceeds from our planned combination with TPG Pace Solutions.”
Simplifying the vacation rental ownership experience
The Vacasa Homeowner app seeks to help homeowners stay more connected to their vacation rental with a user-friendly, mobile interface. With key functionalities such as a revenue performance dashboard, owner hold management tools, booking calendar views, real-time push notifications for bookings, and customer support, Vacasa wants to offer homeowners greater transparency into the performance of their homes, even if they live thousands of miles away.
The app joins a collection of innovations developed to simplify and enhance the vacation rental owner experience. Powering homeowner revenue performance, Vacasa’s proprietary yield management system leverages pricing algorithms, proprietary pricing data and artificial-intelligence modelling to optimise pricing and drive greater revenue for homeowners.
Its system suggests unique rates for over 30,000 properties for the upcoming 540 days, totalling around 15 million suggested room night prices.
Vacasa maintains an extensive distribution network for its listings of more than 100 booking sites, including Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo, while driving more than 30 per cent of its bookings on its website and guest app. In addition, the company’s proprietary universal channel management system instantly shares listing details with appropriate booking sites, pushing any needed updates to listings or pricing changes.
Expanding the Vacasa technology ecosystem
Beyond the homeowner experience, Vacasa’s suite of technologies has been developed to enhance the guest experience and increase efficiency in vacation rental home operations.
Bringing the vacation rental booking and in-home experience together, the Vacasa guest app allows guests to book a stay, provides information they need about their home such as its location, door codes and access instructions, and offers customer service channels.
In addition, the company has launched its Vacasa Field App to provide local operations teams with real-time information and updates on home maintenance tickets, and developed its HomeCare Hub which includes a patented scheduler algorithm that optimises clean scheduling across geographic regions.
The Vacasa Homeowner App is available for Vacasa homeowners to download in the App Store for iPhones, and Google Play for Android devices.
Vacasa manages 30,000+ homes across more than 400 destinations in North America, Belize and Costa Rica. In July, the company announced that it had entered into an agreement to become a publicly traded company through a SPAC [special purpose acquisition company] merger with TPG Pace Solutions.
