Teletext Holidays is upping its fight against HomeAway in the holiday letting market in the UK, unveiling a new version of its VillaRenters brand and the system to support it.
The marketplace has changed dramatically in the past few years as HomeAway muscled in with the acquisition of Holiday Rentals and Owners Direct and, more recently, TripAdvisor's foray into Europe when it bought Holiday Lettings in June 2010.
Teletext's VillaRenters has sat on the sidelines as the US pair have snapped up companies and eyed the lucrative vacation rental business, but is now ramping up its own efforts.
The VillaRenters site was relaunched this week - usual look and feel changes - and is pushing a price transparency message to potential customers (it previously only showed the full price of a property at the end of the booking process).
Furthermore the technology which essentially powers the back-end, known as Rentalsystems, is being moved to a more prominent position within the business so that property owners can manage their create and manage their own listings in the system.
The system has a new loading and editing process as well as analytics tools so property users can understand how a particular property is performing on the site.
Teletext is in the middle of a string of new initiatives, originally announced in December 2010, including the relaunch of the flagship brand (although it had a few problems on the first airing).
NB: Rentalsystems will be exhibiting at Travel Technology Europe next week. Full guide here.