Voya.ge is an online vacation rental startup aiming to connect home owners and travellers while leaving control in the hands of the owners.
After managing a vacation rental company for seven years and with some programming experience under his belt, co-founder, Vincent Gagne, felt he could create a better service than what is currently out there.
The team is small with Gagne joined by co-founder Luc Mikelsons and programming support from the team at Factore in Hamilton, Ontario.
The revenue model for Voya.ge, which is self-funded, is a $10 per property per year listing fee and the startup hopes to achieve profitability by keeping a tight control on operating costs.
PhoCusWright estimates the US vacation rental market at about $25 billion in the US but believes there are more than one million properties worldwide.
Competition in the sector is already stiff with the likes of HomeAway, FlipKey, Airbnb and many other smaller players already trying to 'claw or spam their way up', according to Gagne.
Describe what your start-up does, what problem it solves (differently to what is already out there) and for whom?
Voya.ge is a vacation rentals directory that puts property owners in touch with travellers in way that saves them both time. It also gives more control to individual vacation rental owners over their communications and data.
Why should people or companies use your startup?
a. Travellers will find the property they are looking for faster. (If it is on Voyage although our inventory is still small)
b. Owners can clearly show their property with large images, flexible amenities, and direct links to their websites, Facebook and Google+ pages.
c. We believe in giving ownership of data to owners. Vacation rental owners can update their calendar automatically through the program. They can also export it and feed it to the Open Source bookings management app we built.
d. We don’t email people who inquire about a property with 'other properties you might be interested in'.
Other than going viral and receiving mountains of positive PR, what is the strategy for raising awareness and getting customers/users?
So far growth has been from personal contacts in the industry and word of mouth as well as active participation in communities and good old phone calls.
We are currently working on content marketing in partnership with vacation rental owners. It has a lot more personality than what is the SEO filler on most sites. Plus it helps raise awareness of their expertise.
Also, we make free business cards for owners who can provide us with really good high-resolution pictures of their properties. It has been a great way to spread the word about their rental and Voya.ge at the same time.
We have also started one Open Source project for owners and that created a few brand advocates. We have another Open Source project on its way. Our listings will be free until the map has 10 000.
How did your initial idea evolve? Were there changes/any pivots along the way? What other options have you considered for the business if the original vision fails?
The initial idea was just to make a faster and cheaper vacation rentals directory. As owners joined the website, we learned about their struggles to maintain rental calendars and generate client correspondence. This feedback inspired us to add the API to the website and develop the Open Source app. We are building automatic-listing updates through our API as well. That way we can appeal to managers with large inventories as well.
Where do you see yourselves in 3 years time, what specific challenges do you hope to have overcome ?
In three years, we hope Voya.ge will be a well-known brand. We might not be buying an advertising spot at the Super Bowl, but you will know who we are. In three years, all main destinations will be full of listings. The price per listing will still be $10 and our growth will have happened without VC money. We look forward to having an active community of owners contributing to the development of a few open-source projects and reaching out to the less tech-savvy.
What is wrong with the travel, tourism and hospitality industry that requires another startup to help it out?
The vacation rentals market has become a very centralized and controlling place. We went from directories with bad designs that charged a lot of money, to beautiful directories that make money by controlling communications between owners and travellers. We think there is good business to be made offering an affordable product that allows people to interact in a more transparent environment. Plus, our startup empowers vacation rentals by giving them sophisticated tools to control their advertising and manage their properties.
Tnooz view:
In recent months there have been a spate of bullish startups with big claims so it's good to see something a little more humble. Voya.ge is taking it slowly, trying things, seeing what works and developing accordingly.
Building up relationships with property owners through simple techniques is good and will get the ball rolling in terms of word of mouth but there is huge competition out there that is throwing big bucks at marketing.
Putting control back in the hands of owners, by allowing direct contact with travellers (and links to website, Facebook etc), will appeal to many with concerns about fees for the massive listings sites and/or commission payments to other online intermediaries.
The development of APIs side of the business is also interesting and should help alleviate some of the challenges home owners have with keeping availability up-to-date and down the road, in being able to update listing automatically.
Crucial to Voya.ge's immediate future is its ability to scale up the number of listings quickly so that customers find what they want and recommend the service to others.
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