Always wanted something like that. i spent always hours and hours filtering the airbnb listings just to find out they are not available. Curious what s the model here? who pays for what?
@ourielohayon Thanks for asking! We ask the local inventory expert to give us a small commission for the booking. It is less expensive than some of the other channels where they currently list, so they are motivated to work with us. We also make a small margin on things like trip insurance.
@ourielohayon We rarely, but sometimes do charge a convenience fee for some bookings (like booking a wedding or working with multiple owners to fit large groups). Our goal is to bring great service to the traveler without a mess of fees...
@ourielohayon Great question, Ouriel. We currently don’t have a pre-arranged discount with Airbnb, but we have always partnered with them to help our supply clients get more traffic. We love Airbnb and many of our top hosts work with them. There are many professional property managers who source deals from travel agents, consortia groups, OTA’s and others beyond Airbnb. We know that hosts often have trouble communicating efficiently with their guests and that is the service we aim to bring to the market.
For me, the magic here is being able to book without having to go back and forth with every single host like on airbnb or VRBO. When I've booked on those platforms in the past, I've had to have multiple inquiries in at a time in order to make sure I actually got one due to slow response times from hosts. I then have to awkwardly turn down the ones I don't want.
I'm excited to see this process get streamlined. @hartawilliams I'm curious, what does the turnaround time look like?
@alexyaseen Great question. We are big on professional service, so it can vary. We have spend hours working with someone to plan a wedding, and have turned around easy options in a few minutes. It all depends on how much help you need and how unique your request. The one consistent thing is that you can hand off that process to us, and we will return options for you.
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How do you handle reservation issues and disputes between the renters and the rentees? I've had cases where we've had troubles getting into a place before and I've know others who have walked in a place and walked right back out because it was disgusting. Same goes for cleaning fees and deposits. What if the owner claims you damaged the property? Since your company makes the reservation, do those issues go through you?
@andrewserff Thanks for your question, Andrew. We always want our guests to have a great experience. However, sometimes it is tough. We offer trip insurance to those that are concerned about their stay or who are staying in a vacation rental for the first time. We only work with reputable parties. People renting their place for the first time who are still figuring out this process are probably not the best fit. We look really closely at reviews and guest experiences before recommending anything. In the past there have been occasions where we have been held to a specific budget or date restriction that limited our ability to recommend a place we felt comfortable with. We told customers that we can book it for them, but we don't recommend it and gave the reasons why. When things do happen, which they do, we like to serve as an intermediary body for the guest in order to get it resolved. Last year we had only 2-3 issues we needed to work through, so we are pretty confident in this system.
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@hartawilliams Interesting. Sounds like you're assuming a bit of risk on your side. Anyway, next time we are renting a vacation rental, I'll definitely give you guys a try!
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Hunter
Honestly, with my crazy life right now, I'm not sure how I could have booked my wife's birthday surprise without OneRooftop. My favorite part is no longer having to do the "call every AirBnB property and hope they actually are available" that we are all so used to. OneRooftop takes care of it all. Check them out...you'll be very impressed.
@rjhungate We're glad we could help you Ryan. Try us again when you need a vacation :)
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This new service looks fantastic! The use case that makes the most sense to me would be trying to book a ski house or a weekend getaway - I know broadly what I want (a house that can sleep 8 near a mountain in Vermont), but I don't care about the specific location. Searching for this on AirBnB is a huge pain because it takes so much time to try to narrow down the choices, and then play the song and dance of reaching out to hosts at different locations and waiting to hear back.
It also looks like OneRooftop works directly with owners or landlords, so I imagine they have a pretty good sense of supply as well and are not just checking on AIrBnB for me. Will try this out soon!
The process of finding a vacation rental definitely needs to be fixed. Too many choices, too much work. Would love a streamlined experience with a lot more curation. Someone will nail this eventually, looks like OneRooftop is on the right path.
@rywalker Thanks for the comment, Ry. We feel your pain, and we hope this helps the experience for many. What is shocking to us is that there is still a ton of inventory that is not listed online. OneRooftop has access to that inventory by working with the local experts.
Really reminds me of flightfox with the personal concierge flow, which for me nails it over kayak. I totally see onerooftop being the flightfox equivalent for vacation rentals. Awesome job!
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