STARTUP STAGE: VacayMyWay aims to simplify short-term rental bookings

VacayMyWay

VacayMyWay is a short-term rental marketplace built on technology that aims to provide a simplified, transparent and cost-effective experience hosts and travelers.

VacayMyWay’s booking site launched in early November with whole-home properties throughout North America and plans to enter the European market in 2022.

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

VacayMyWay is a refreshingly new short-term rental booking channel founded on four core principles: profitability, trust, transparency and communication. Our marketplace provides seamless solutions to both hosts and guests by removing unnecessary barriers to sale, providing the absolute best properties based on a guest’s needs and returning profit to the hosts. On average, our wholesale pricing model helps hosts retain up to 20% more booking revenue while charging no guest service fees. 

VacayMyWay is poised to capitalize on our early traction by launching into Europe during Q1 2022 and aggressively expanding our inventory of properties. Early adopters have marveled at how VacayMyWay is returning the joy to vacation rentals.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

VacayMyWay’s mission is to provide a dynamic, transparent and cost-effective booking platform for vacation rentals. We firmly believe that vacation rentals should be an enjoyable experience, not the headache that they have become. Our platform is grounded in the idea that booking websites should “get out of the way” and allow hosts and travelers to freely communicate.

VacayMyWay’s technology was designed to empower hosts in the operation of their business. We approached this from a fresh perspective by identifying the key pain points in the industry and developing our technology to solve these industry weaknesses. A majority of our technology was built in-house by an expert team of developers which ensures that the platform is built to scale aggressively from the ground up.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

• Strengths
  • Our team is comprised of industry experts with real world experience and over 75 years in the industry.
  • We have conducted extensive market analysis to understand our customers’ pain points.
  • VacayMyWay is nimble and can pivot and react instinctively to emerging market trends.
• Weaknesses
  • Consumers have generally experienced poor customer service in the industry and have developed a lack of trust in short-term rental booking marketplaces. Our challenge is to secure customer confidence and trust in the VacayMyWay platform despite the industry shortcomings.
  • Limited brand awareness. We have seen significant organic growth and continue to add integration partners and property inventory.
• Opportunities
  • Hosts and guests are tired of perpetually increasing fees and poor customer service provided by the legacy OTA’s.
  • VacayMyWay leverages its technology to reduce operational costs and passes the savings on to hosts (increased profitability) and guests (no fees).
  • Fully transparent fee structure means NO surprises at checkout.
  • Resources are in place to rapidly expand our footprint internationally to take advantage of the travel resurgence. 
• Threats
  • Market is highly saturated, and our direct competitors have the benefit of being household names.
  • Competition for host inventory is extremely aggressive and the cost of acquisition is high. 
  • Host complacency resulting from pre-pandemic travel bounce back masks prior sins of the industry. 

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspective?

• Superfluous fees - VacayMyWay charges no guest service fees.
• Price sticker shock during checkout - VacayMyWay offers upfront transparent pricing. Everyone knows how much we charge and to whom.
• Search results based on the booking channel’s best financial interest - VacayMyWay provides a robust search function optimized to find the best property for a guest based on their search criteria, not based on paid ads or platform biased algorithms.
• Limitations on communication between hosts and guests - VacayMyWay connects hosts and guests through unfiltered communications via our platform.
• Poor customer experience - VacayMyWay provides personalized, easily accessible and competent customer care.
• Hosts’ lack of financial control - VacayMyWay provides hosts with robust tools to autonomously control their funds and the policies for their property.
• Administrative burden of handling security deposits - VacayMyWay provides guest ID verification and $2 million of damage protection for every booking at no additional cost.

So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

• We have engaged the premier PR firm in the travel industry to promote brand recognition.
• Targeted marketing campaign through digital marketing, affiliate marketing and social media engagement.
• Promotion of brand advocates from our existing customer base who are devoted ambassadors of the VacayMyWay platform. 

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

The VacayMyWay concept and our team is built upon a foundation of extensive industry experience. The industry pain points were initially identified by our CEO’s personal frustrations with the hosting experience. We conducted extensive interviews of both hosts and guests to identify their pain points and formulate concrete solutions. The overwhelmingly positive feedback we have received post-launch reinforces our product-market fit.

The short-term rental market is vast and growing rapidly year-over-year. VacayMyWay provides value propositions to the entire market and we have positioned ourselves to capitalize on the post-pandemic resurgence in travel both domestically and internationally.

How and when will you make money?

At VacayMyWay, we use a wholesale pricing model and make money when a host makes money. It’s that simple. We are currently post-revenue and gaining market share. 

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

• Jim Stewart (CEO) Jim is a 22-year veteran of the airline travel industry. He specialized in operational analysis where he led a team focused on optimizing the efficiency of aircraft and flight crew. That work resulted in a still-standing record level of productivity for any major U.S. airline along with record profitability.
• Billy Smith (CPO) is an U.S. Army veteran with extensive experience in software engineering and product management. With seven product launches utilizing lean international teams under his belt, he is the perfect individual to lead our roadmap and product direction. 
• Ted Hight (COO & CLO) is an accomplished attorney and executive who is adept at navigating companies through periods of accelerated growth. Previously, he was an equity partner at a law firm in Atlanta where he focused on technology startups in the SaaS, transportation, and hospitality industries.
• Heidie Henriksen (VP - Business Development) is a results-driven short-term rental industry expert with over 20 years of experience promoting and operating vacation rentals. After launching a SAAS technology and marketing program for vacation rental hosts, she co-founded ASTRHO to support individual hosts with much needed industry resources.  
• Fay Dunahoo (Director of Customer Experience) is the mastermind behind VacayMyWay’s world class customer experience team. She boasts almost 20 years of professional property management experience and eight years specifically in the short-term rental industry. 

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

We believe that the strength of VacayMyWay derives from our diverse international team. We focus not just on the talent and job performance of our team members, but the unique backgrounds and life experiences that help mold our company’s culture.

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

The challenges caused by being a geographically diverse team during a global pandemic are definitely the most difficult.  While there is no adequate replacement for in-person collaboration and team building, it is inspiring to see how we have evolved into a tight-knit team.

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact - so why are you going to be one of the lucky ones?

VacayMyWay has already gained traction offering trustworthy and transparent solutions to both hosts and travelers. Our company’s structure is lean, and we are nimble enough to capitalize on necessary pivots. Our hand-picked team of industry experts has the drive, perseverance, and talent to make VacayMyWay the next success.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

In one year, VacayMyWay will be in an aggressive growth stage and continuing our expansion both domestically and into international markets. While our next round of investment will dictate the scale and breadth of expansion, we forecast exponential growth.

What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.) 

VacayMyWay’s end-game is to revolutionize the short-term rental industry. We will achieve this by growing our traction and continually focusing on the value proposition to hosts and guests.