At this point, there are plenty of management platforms for travel agencies working with hotels, but—as alternative accommodations become more popular—one site is dedicated to serving the vacation rental marketplace.
BookingSync, a French travel technology startup, helps vacation owners and travel agencies manage their properties via its management platform.

Its purpose is ultimately “two-pronged,” said Steven Gilbert, head of business development and co-founder of BookingSync. “It’s to get more bookings and also just to make it easier. Managing a number of vacation rentals can be cumbersome, particularly if you don’t have a tool to automate the process.”

Last week, BookingSync announced the re-launch of its website and cloud-based vacation rental software, complete with new features. BookingSync has also formed new partnerships with vacation rental portals.

Two new features in particular figure to make life easier for vacation rental sellers: Full Property Management and Rates Management.
With Full Property Management, owners and agents can now include rental descriptions, geographic locations, photos, amenities and special offers all from one platform.
“That's getting closer to centralizing the management of your vacation rental,” Gilbert said.

With Rates Management, BookingSync aims to provide “one of the easiest yet most flexible and complete rates engines in the (vacation rental) space,” according to a press release. That includes automated price updates.
A recent partnership with Roomorama ensures that BookingSync customers can now share all relevant details about a property on the short-term lodging rental site.

At the moment, BookingSync property owners and managers can also sync their availability calendars and rates onto major vacation rental site HomeAway, as well as its affiliates VRBO, OwnersDirect, Abritel, Toprural, VacationRentals, Few-Direkt and AlugueTemporada. Soon, full distribution integration will be available with HomeAway like with Roomorama.

BookingSync CEO and Founder Sébastien Grosjean is a vacation owner and software developer himself. In 2010, he owned several vacation rentals in Greece, but needed an easier way to manage reservation. This inspired the creation of BookingSync, as well as its recent development.
“We're excited here to be re­launching BookingSync,” Grosjean said, via a press release. “It's the start of a new era where connectivity, openness and extensibility are key. With the strength of our pillar values, ease­ of ­use, quality of service and respect, we are redefining vacation rental software and looking forward to releasing a number of strategic partnerships and integrations in the coming months. Once again, we step up and make agents and owners ‘Save Time and Book More.’”

So far, BookingSync appears to have drawn interest from a variety of agents and owners.
“We’ve been growing (our user base) every month,” Gilbert said. “The customers we work closely with are happy. The response has been positive.”

Gilbert said the journey has been both fun and challenging.
“It’s fun because the vacation rental space is growing and it’s constantly changing,” Gilbert said. “It’s a very fluid space which means there’s a lot of opportunity.”
Of course, governments around the world seem to always be changing regulations when it comes to vacation rentals, which can also make it challenging to “navigate,” Gilbert said.

BookingSync, which became a startup this year, has raised over $1 million and is active in more than 90 countries. It boasts more than 2,000 owners and managers.

A share of BookingSync’s profits also go to funding charities and humanitarian, social and environmental projects.

For more information, visit www.BookingSync.com.