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Interviews
Meet Your Account Manager: Adriana Pinheiro
Name: Adriana Country of origin: Brazil What can you recommend from your hometown?: See the Ilha Grande and the beaches of Arraial do Cabo, a paradise that almost no one visits when they come to my hometown. The market you work for: Portugal, Brazil and South America Your favorite foreign city: Barcelona What you like best about your job: Helping owners increase sales at Only-apartments. Your dream journey: The Maldives are a paradise I’d like to explore one day. Your favorite food: Estrogonoff de Frango. It’s a traditional dish from my home country, even though the name may not sound too Brazilian. What could never be missing in your suitcase: Excitement and a photo camera. What you value most in an apartment when traveling: The views, because I like to wake up to nice views over the city, beach or mountain....
Meet Your Account Manager: Carina Massachs
Catalan Carina is responsible for responding to our property owners on the Spanish market. Her ample experience in the sector makes her any owner’s best ally when it comes to solving questions and concerns. Carina is the best example that professionalism is fully compatible with a permanent smile. Name: Carina Massachs Palahí Hometown: Girona What can you recommend from your hometown: the Jewish Quarter, the Cathedral, the hanging houses on the river Onyar and its bridges, a stroll around the city walls, the Flower Festival in May, and dinner at one of the best restaurants in the world, El Celler de Can Roca. The market you work for: Spanish Your favorite foreign city: Edinburgh What do you like best about your job?: The contact with each owner and the satisfaction of knowing that their properties turn over increasingly better results. Your dream journey: a trip around the world with an open return date. Your favorite food: Indian and Thai cuisine What could never be missing in your suitcase: sandals and mosquito repellent. What you value most in an apartment when traveling: cleanliness, location and the interaction with the owner....Meet Your Account Manager
All owners who have registered their property at Only-apartments will have had the chance to exchange a couple of comments with their corresponding Account Manager. But who exactly are these people? Their job is to advise us regarding our ad, to constantly remind us to keep our calendar up to date, to let us know whether any info is inaccurate, and they keep us informed about upcoming events and important dates that can bring in more bookings… In short, they are that Jiminy Cricket that every home owner needs and wants when it comes to managing the ad for their property at the Only-apartments website. And it is high time to meet the face behind the name of each of those ‘voices of conscience’ that are at our disposal for whatever we may need. To that end, we have created a brief questionnaire to help us zoom in a little on our Account Manager, know who we are talking to, and bring to life the character at the other end of the screen/phone line. Meet Marta (ITALY) Meet Carina (SPAIN) Meet Adriana (PORTUGAL, BRAZIL)...
Meet Your Account Manager: Marta Meo
Meet Marta, our Italian Account Manager. At 26 years of age, Marta is responsible for managing the accounts of all our home owners in Italy. She has been in Barcelona for 6 years, 3 of which have been spent working at Only-apartments; doing everything in her power to help increase bookings. Like a little “worker ant”, Marta focuses her five senses on her work. She is meticulous and demanding without ever relinquishing that vibrant Italian spirit that makes her take pleasure in the small things. Name: Marta Hometown: Livorno, Italy What can you recommend from your hometown: The sea, the sun, and a good cacciucco alla livornese! The market you work for: Italian Your favorite foreign city: Barcelona, obviously! What do you like best about your job?: It delights me to see that property owners are happy with our work. Your dream journey: A desert island, sun, sea, and a good mojito! Your favorite food: As any proper Italian, it could be no other than pizza. What could never be missing in your suitcase: Sunscreen What you value most in an apartment when traveling: Location, cleanliness, that it’s well furnished, access to every comfort… and a terrace is definitely a bonus! ...
Interview with Naveen Sharma, member of the founding team at Lodgify
What does your startup do? Our startup is dedicated to develop innovative and affordable technology for vacation rental (VR) owners and property managers around the world, helping them grow their accommodation business. Lodgify is our brand new Software-as-a-Service solution that allows VR operators to create their own mobile-friendly website. In addition, it provides them with a Booking and Reservation System (integrated with PayPal and Stripe), and a Channel Manager which automatically synchronizes calendar and reservation data with listings that they may have on external vacation rental portals. What problem does it solve? It essentially simplifies the management of your vacation rental business. Firstly, Lodgify easily allows you to easily create a professional website with a “Book now” function, which means you can start accepting credit card payments online, without paying any commission. The entire booking process is automated, i.e., calculation of booking value, online credit card payment, email notifications to owner and renter, correspondence tracking, update of availability calendars to avoid double bookings, etc. Secondly, with Lodgify’s Reservation System you can easily manage availability data, rates, reservations and reviews, no matter whether you have 1 or 100+ properties. Finally, what makes Lodgify a complete solution, is that the Channel Manager makes sure that your marketing channels are always up-to-date and in sync. How did you come up with the idea? A few years ago, our parents had asked us to help them rent out their vacation properties, as they were finding it hard and time consuming to manage the business. We searched for an easy-to-use solution that covered our parents’ needs. However, we just couldn’t find one which suited...The Vacation Rental Owner: Before & After
By Matt Landau In my years of operating my own vacation rentals and consulting hundreds of owners/managers on a daily basis, I’ve come to get a pretty good idea of what it takes to succeed in this industry. Take being hospitable for instance: if you aren’t inherently hospitable to your guests or if you don’t learn how to be artificially hospitable to your guests, you will never succeed with vacation rentals. But the anatomy of a successful vacation rental owner goes far beyond bullet-point characteristics. Because many of us never had any experience with tourism or marketing before we got started, the learning curve of today’s property owners more resembles a dynamic, ever-changing scatter chart of ups and downs than it does a smooth upward curve. Being new to the vacation rental industry means a certain level of naivety. With an upsurge in popularity of sites like Only-apartments, HomeAway or AirBnB, many owners tend to forget that they also need to be proactive. It can be easy, if your property is doing well, for instance, to lay back and become complacent about your business. It can be easy to run your rental like a hobby, enjoy the passive income and even perhaps think about acquiring a second or third property without any real business-like acumen. It can be equally just as easy to slip into frustration mode at the lack of inquiries or bookings because a listing site’s lead generation seems to be slow. Many new owners start freaking out when their property isn’t filling up as expected. But there is a very tangible shift that takes place somewhere...
The decoration of your apartment (interview with Rached)
1. Tell us a little bit about you: how long have you been renting your apartment? How long have you been listed in Only-apartments? We are in the holiday rentals business since 2004 as a travel agent, and since 2007 we started with our own apartments targeting high-end clientele and therefore selecting premium locations for our properties and taking our time for furnishing and decorating our apartment to suit the taste of our guests. Actually I can say without any exaggeration that we own some of the highest quality apartments in Prague, if compared to our competition. 2. Could you explain how you decorate it? Starting with the main pieces of furniture and finishing with the small details for decoration, we always decide about a style for the apartment and then we try to keep a coherence of colors and materials during the decoration process. For example, combining dark this business and attract the same high level clientele, so reinvesting into the apartment is considered a part of our expenses, replacing furniture that gets old or used, updating electronics with the latest technologies, or adding new decoration items to give a new life to the apartment. 6. How would you describe your style of decoration? I can answer in one word: unique! As you can see our apartments, we don’t use usual decoration from Ikea or similar, we source costly pieces of decoration and furniture for our apartments to keep our unique style....FAQ’s
I want to publish my property in Only-apartments. What are the conditions?
Working with Only-apartments has no cost for the property owner. Our commission is always added to the price that you indicate for your property. Besides, you do not have to be exclusively working with our company: you will have a calendar where you will manage the availability of your property.
You must know that we do not work “on request” (by demand) and for this reason it is vital to always maintain the calendar updated, as reservations are direct reservations and you should accept them all: at the moment you start to advertise your property in Only-apartments you should maintain your calendar and prices updated and block any dates that are not available (if you use other calendars or Channel Manager, we provide the tools to synchronize the calendar you use to our calendar).
We normally receive reservations for short-term stays (days or weeks), rarely for a month, therefore it takes one person to take care of the check-ins and cleanings. We do not offer these services, but depending on the town perhaps we can refer you to another company or person to do so.
If you are interested in publishing your property in Only-apartments, please access the page for property owners and create a new account to be able to enlist your property. If you have any doubts about the conditions for cooperation, you can write us at property@only-apartments.com.
Do I have to accept all reservations of Only-apartments?
Yes. In Only-apartments we work with a system of direct bookings, with no requests. We do it like this because with the years of experience we have found it beneficial for the customer (who does not have to make a request to obtain a property) and the property owner (who avoids exchanging emails and knows that when he or she receives a reservation, it is confirmed). This way, we avoid frustrations on both sides.
This system is very beneficial for everyone. But we have noticed that the most important complaint from our customers comes precisely when they make a reservation that has been subsequently canceled by the property owner. A cancellation has a huge management and reputational cost.
In case you do not accept a reservation, you should take a look at our Overbookings Policy.
What happens if I do not accept a reservation?
As property owner in Only-apartments, you can’t cancel any reservations. In case you decided not to accept a reservation from Only-apartments, you should immediately get in contact with us sending an email at info@only-apartments.com or calling by telephone. In any case, you must not get in contact with the customer. These are the consequences of not accepting a reservation (also specified in ourOverbookings policy):
- Once an owner advises us that they are not accepting the booking, Only-apartments will temporarily remove their apartment/s and will look for alternative accommodation for the client. The owner must pay 100 Euros to cover the cost of administration, by providing us with his or her card details.
- If the owner helps Only-apartments to find alternative accommodation for the client and they accept it, the amount to pay will be 50 Euros only. However, if the client does not accept any of the alternatives suggested, the full 100 Euros will be payable by the owner, and Only-apartments will refund the reservation fee to the client
- If the owner gets in touch with the client and not with Only-apartments, he or she will be in breach of this policy and will face a penalty of 100 Euros.
- In any case, not accepting a reservation will result in the owners’ apartments being penalized in terms of their position in Only-apartments’ search results, whereas regularly updating the calendar will result in them being rewarded
- When the owner has paid the corresponding fee, Only-apartments will publish their apartment once more
In the event of not accepting a reservation or cancelling a booking a second time, Only-apartmentsreserves the right to remove an apartment indefinitely and all those associated with the owner. If the reason for not accepting a reservation is due to major incident, and evidence is provided of this (building works, fire, etc.), Only-apartments will review the case carefully and the owner may be exempt from any penalty. Only-apartments reserves the right to terminate its association with an owner at any time, requiring in any case that any pending bookings are fulfilled.
I have a question on a reservation I have received. What do I do?
If you have any doubts on any reservations received, write us at info@only-apartments.com.
I need to modify the information of my property
You can modify the information, the conditions, or the status of your property directly from your extranet. If you need our help, you can write us at property@only-apartments.com.
What does the rent amount include?
The rent amount, in other words the total amount that the client needs to pay directly to the owner, needs to include the VAT, if applicable. This means that this tax cannot be charged separately should the client ask for an invoice.
In the event that there are other taxes or expenses that apply (e.g. the tourist tax or supplies), these must be specified in the conditions of the apartment. Otherwise, they cannot be charged to the client.