SALES INFORMATION HOLIDAY VELVET LTD http://www.holiday-velvet.com/

BACKGROUND

Holiday Velvet (HV) is a vacation rental online travel agency where vacation homes can be booked online. It was started by two people (Vanessa de Souza Lage & James Burrows) in a 25 square meter apartment in Rome, in the winter of 2006.

Initially HV owners could upload their properties and take their requests directly. In 2009 the goal was to focus on instant booking yet provide a service that other companies weren’t giving in the booking process. Holiday Velvet has its own proprietary booking system

Vacation rental owners have 3 choices:

1. Instant booking where no confirmation is required

2. Online booking request where the owner need to confirm the booking in HV

3. On request (for villas and destinations where is was harder to get availability without emailing)

Main facts

● Domain purchased in 2006 ● Site went live in 2006 ● Desktop solution only (no app, no mobile phone adoption) ● Built php with mysql database* ● Code preview option ● no preview-page ● Admin access can be provided ● In-site billing ● Payment Options: Credit Card, Bank Transfers

HV comprehensive list of features allows any type of vacation rental to register itself and get online reservations. The content management system is extremely advanced and of high international standard.

The site’s features were built over a period of 12 years, it represents 12 years of gathered knowledge.

Top Locations:

There are online bookings made mostly in Italy, Rome, Florence and Venice as well as Amsterdam, Paris and New York.

More than 8000 properties are listed on the site and can be booked either through booking requests or instant bookings. Owners update their calendars on site.

Partners:

Holiday Velvet has an API for real time bookings on the page and at agents sites. There are as well API connections with Roomorama, Homaway, zstay, apartmentsapart, only apartments, gowithoh, tripping.com, Wimdu, apartment scanner, xpatmedia, apartmenty24.

90% of reservations come in via the API channels. These 3rd party sites can generate revenue through their activities.

The list of partners, that are connected to HV, allows to send online bookings to more than 70,000 listings world wide. This includes API's and xml connections with giant property management "Kigo" from Real Page and websites like Only-Apartments.com.

Team:

Today’s team consists of one manager, part time programmer and two interns.

HV’s KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

● 8705 property listings (access to 60,000+ properties via api connections) ● 602 daily active users ● 2335 daily page views ● 780 daily unique sessions ● >6600 facebook Likes ● >2900 twitter followers ● Google Analytics best keyword is “rome holiday apartments”

You can find HV on facebook, twitter, pinterest, instagram and tumblr.

https://www.facebook.com/holidayvelvet

https://twitter.com/holidayvelvet

http://www.pinterest.com/source/holiday-velvet.com

http://holiday-velvet.tumblr.com

http://www.holiday-velvet.com/guide

http://instagram.com/holidayvelvet

The average site commission is 15% and the average reservation cost is 500€. Peak season is January to April, mis is May to July and September to October. November and December represents the lowest season.

BASIC CAPABILITIES AND ENGINES

● Instant Booking ● Booking Requests ● Request Ticket System (fast reacting on booking requests) ● Calendar and Request Answering System based on availability ● advanced CMS ● auto email templates ● All languages and currencies ● User and Owner Login ● Super User function ● Newsletter ● Restricted Access ● Reviews ● CRS ( custom reservation system ● Reporting System/Statistics ● User and Admin LogIn ● Voucher system for bookings

Technology

The site is built with PHP on a MVC framework (Mojavi) and runs on mySQL server.

MORE SITE FEATURES

The site can be used by Super Users, Owners, Customers and Restricted Users. Google Apps is used to run the email traffic.The main site holidayvelvet.com brings along the mini site rome-velvet.com.

POI

Point Of Interest on map. Like a google app for maps that describes how far your property is from a certain location, i.e. clients can see how far the Gaudi museum is from their apartment. Owners can add these points of interest on site.

Multiple Units

HV is set up to take multiple units. We cover every single part of the vacation rental business, шncluding hotels and villas. We are good with villas for example with change over in days (arrive on Sunday and leave on Sunday)

Prices and Rates

Bookings can be very flexible: on a daily, weekly, or amount of nights basis. With a discount push for, on any length of stay.

FINANCE

Profit and Loss Statement 2013

Monthly turnover ranges from 30,000 € pm to 7,000 € pm in the low season. Current costs are 4,103 € pm.

HISTORY STATEMENT

Initially HV was a listing site where owners could upload properties and take requests directly. We charged per annum per listing. Whilst we grew our brand and inventory spread, we decided to run two areas (rome and venice) exclusively as an agency destination to support the business. This means requests would come directly to HV and we would answer each one and take payment if there was a booking via paypal. The agency area worked well for us so we decided to convert the whole site to this model. Everything was on request but we managed each one.

After time, we believed that taking bookings online was the way forward. HV went to instant booking in 2009. In 2010 HV undertook its first xml implementation with ApartmentsApart giving us access to a larger inventory that could be booked online.

In 2011 we had our first issue with Google that started the downward trend. Bad SEO caused a big drop in traffic and we had to let staff go. We were 15 people at the time which went down to less.

IMPRESSIONS

Welcome Page

http://www.holiday-velvet.com/

Featured Vacation Rentals on front page

Holiday Velvet free Travel Guide

Holiday Velvet on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/holidayvelvet

Holiday Velvet on Twitter

https://twitter.com/holidayvelvet

Holiday Velvet on Pinterest

http://www.pinterest.com/source/holiday-velvet.com

CONTACT SALE

Liran Jakob Rosenfeld Co-Founder and CEO Roomixer.com TEL TLV: + 972 (0) 52 781 2877 TEL UK: + 44 (0) 20 376 905 73 TEL USA: +16 464320353 www.roomixer.com www.poweryourrental.com Skype: "reservationsglobal" Linkedin: il.linkedin.com/pub/liran-jakob-rosenfeld/8/4b8/390/