How Easy Welcome has Taken the Stress Out of Managing Vacation Rentals

Grazia Pappalardo laughs about it now but a few years ago she was overwhelmed by managing 15-20 vacation rental sites for Easy Welcome in Milan, Italy. She had to manage every channel from HomeAway to Airbnb manually for each site, which made for some long days.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said recently with a smile.

Then she found Kigo, the vacation rental platform that is known for managing, marketing and delivering the complete vacation rental experience.

In a flash, Pappalardo began managing a single channel that transfers all the leasing information to all sites. Immediately, she realized the impact it had on her business, which now involves managing 15 rental properties in Milan and 23 in Bellagio, a popular village that is considered the pearl of Lake Como.

“I was able to be more productive in what I was already doing, increasing the number of sites managed, and this certainly had a positive impact. It brought more sales channels and so more chances to make a sale, and ultimately more sales,” Pappalardo said.

Pappalardo, who is Easy Welcome’s General Manager, made the move from the hotel industry to vacation rentals a few years ago. She has realized the effectiveness of an all-in-one platform that simplifies finding and booking vacation destinations for travelers while enabling property managers to maximize revenue, reduce operational costs, streamline the guest experience from initial search through check-out.

How Kigo has enabled Easy Welcome to grow

As Easy Welcome’s portfolio grew, Pappalardo needed a solution that could help her keep pace. The vacation rental company already had a website, but Kigo allowed integrating functionality so she could create dedicated pages for all of Easy Welcome’s properties and create destinations and collections for them.

With Kigo, she is able to quickly get a rental property to market by creating a description and posting online. Within hours of posting, she often sees positive results.

“It is really satisfying to see it published online right away for me and the clients, the owners of the apartments who see it published immediately,” she said. “Very often I get the first reservation in the first 5-6 hours. So I'm really happy about this.”

Kigo also allows Easy Welcome to integrate a property management payment system that offers clients the chance to reserve directly on the website.

“This is a wonderful thing, customers can ask for availability, ask me questions about the properties and then actually reserve and pay directly,” she said.

Booking vacation rentals with less stress

The flexibility of Kigo’s revenue management platform has made booking properties less stressful and ensured that Easy Welcome gets a competitive rental rate. Pappalardo said the platform allows her to deal with revenue in a simple, agile way so she can set prices daily. She can also decide what discounts she wants to apply during the various seasons.

“It is definitely an excellent product,” Pappalardo said. “In the beginning, I used some of the standard systems that Kigo offered. Then I began personalizing, and I do that almost daily, so I make some somewhat complicated calculations, but the Kigo algorithms certainly help me out."

Growing business through an all-in-one platform

Pappalardo’s next challenge is leveraging Kigo to grow Easy Welcome’s portfolio to 50 properties in the next year. She no longer feels overwhelmed and believes the company is on the right path for the long-term.

“I think that certainly with the help of a good Channel Manager it is possible,” she said. “This is my main objective.”

Learn how Kigo's end-to-end vacation rental software can take the stress out of your business. Get a free demo!