How Portugal’s Feels Like Home Gains Confidence in Vacation Rental Bookings

Hand-crafting the perfect vacation rental experience has more than one connotation. One might assume that it's accomplished through skilled craftsmanship, an artisan-like quality of the accommodations or a very personal touch.

Based in Portugal, Feels Like Home can identify with that definition in marketing the more than 500 vacation rental properties it offers. But doing things by hand had a very different meaning before being introduced to Kigo.

When Antonio Quintao founded the vacation rental property management company in 2012, he managed almost two dozen properties through manual processes. Listings were individually generated on the company’s website, and when a customer called or emailed for a holiday rental, the booking was reserved by staff. Feels Like Home employees determined if the property was available, then entered the reservation and keyed in payment information by hand.

Hopefully, the apartment was ready and hadn’t been previously booked.

At the time, it made sense and the company felt like it had control of things. That’s how Quintao and many other vacation rental property managers used to handle reservations and other vacation rental tasks, a way that many today – including himself – would say is outdated, given the technology available.

Driving business results and simplifying processes

“After we began working with Kigo, we had more time to think about the commercial side and develop the business,” he said.

With Kigo and its robust channel manager, a lot of worries went away at Feels Like Home. Now, the staff is no longer concerned with managing bookings thanks to the all-in-one Kigo Marketplace platform. Kigo technology, which synchronizes listings with Feels Like Home’s calendar and dashboard, has allowed the company to drive bookings and focus on expanding its rental property portfolio.

“This partnership gives us confidence that whenever we place new properties on our website and on the partner sites, things run well and we won’t have over-bookings,” Quintao said. "The channel manager, from a technical point of view, is a reliable solution that allows us to not be concerned with things like links to websites, if there are any, if they’re all OK or if we have any synchronization problems.”

Setting optimum rates for maximum occupancy

Quintao said he puts a lot of faith in Kigo’s revenue management solution.

Designed specifically for vacation rental property management, Kigo’s revenue management is a solution that helps maximize revenue for every available night at Feels Like Home. The system works on the principles of hotel revenue management and creates pricing tailored specifically to short-term rentals.

Optimum rates for maximum occupancy are established and Feels Like Home saves time with the solution's set-it-and-forget-it functionality. Hours of doing things by hand are eliminated with Kigo Revenue Manager's integration with Websites, Kigo Reservations, and Kigo Channel Manager.

When occupancy at Feels Like Home is high, the platform outbids competitors during shoulder and low seasons while providing actionable, analytical data for each property.

The solution has given Feels Like Home a different kind of control of its rental business. Quintao sets the perimeters for what will make his business successful and Kigo does the work.

“This allows us to focus on the marketing aspect of the properties themselves” he said. “Kigo is a trustworthy product that gives us comfort and security so that we can obtain more and more vacation rental bookings.”

Get a free demo of Kigo Marketplace.