User:TFCMason/sandbox

BookingPal
Industry:	             Vacation Rental Founded:	             2013 Founders:	             Alex Aydin Team Leaders:	     Alex Aydin Eric Mason Ed Arciniega CHARLES Gordon-Finlayson Headquarters:	     Irvine, California

BookingPal is a cloud based travel technology company, providing a global distribution system and a centralized booking platform for vacation rental properties. Vacation rental property owners/managers can increase their online presence and number of bookings by distributing their inventory via BookingPal’s global distribution channels. Vacation rental properties, timeshare resorts, campgrounds and RV parks worldwide can use BookingPal’s guest generation capabilities to maximize profitability and increase efficiency of their online performance.

BookingPal was founded in 2013 after it's Founder and CEO, Alex Aydin recognized a need for real time availability in the vacation rental industry. Vacation rentals are increasingly in demand around the world but confirming space is currently not easy.

The company centralizes reservations, thus allowing rental properties to be available on OTAs and other listing websites. The key concept is that the vacation rentals supply is highly fragmented, with inventory spread across many sites. It makes it difficult for the customer to truly have an easy overview of what’s available for a particular stay. By creating this centralized inventory capability, the company says it will be able to provide real-time availability and instant bookings across the web. This will no doubt be appealing to property owners tired of managing multiple listing websites, as well as OTAs eager to grab a chunk of the growing vacation rental market – a market the company pegs at $85 billion.

Other areas that the company seeks to address are campgrounds and RV parks, which are traditionally underserved by the major players, and competitive intelligence/yield management solutions within the vacation rental market.

As more travelers seek out home rentals rather than hotels, there is a significant chunk of revenue being siphoned away from the traditional travel centers, such as OTAs, in favor of the big players in the vacation rental space, such as HomeAway.

One of BookingPal’s advisors is David Baggett, co-founder of ITA Software, who emphasizes this point in the funding announcement: “The vacation rental industry is attracting a lot of attention from the largest travel companies as increasingly sophisticated consumers look for alternative experiences from the usual hotel vacations. Early movers, such as BookingPal, are very exciting propositions for companies in the travel industry.”

Current partners working with BookingPal to increase worldwide vacation rental availability are: Bookt, CiiRUS, FindRentals, and Interhome. More are being added daily.