Instant Software Blog

A Letter to VRMA East Attendees

Instant Software — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:36:33 -0600

Dear VRMA East attendees,

The HomeAway Software for Professionals team was excited to see so many customers and friends at VRMA East in Hilton Head this year. All of us appreciate having a forum, like this gathering, to address the global issues that affect us all, as well as the specific concerns that an individual customer might have, so kudos to the VRMA for hosting the event.

One consistent concern we heard about during the event was around the security of your data. As a subsidiary of the world’s largest vacation rental marketing company, it makes sense for those of us at HomeAway Software for Professionals to speak directly about our company’s commitment to the security and privacy of your data.

To begin, let me make a distinction between data that resides within your private business system (ie, PropertyPlus, Escapia, etc.) and data that is provided to the public via HomeAway’s distribution websites (HomeAway.com, VacationRentals.com, etc.). All data you place and store within your business system belongs to you: we have no right to use it or to share it with others. Not only would it violate privacy laws within the United States to use your data without your permission, it would violate the commitment to privacy that is a core principle of our company’s founders. We have teams of people who are committed to data security, including technology experts who monitor web traffic and data access who work hard to insure that outsiders (otherwise known as “hackers”) are identified and stopped when they try to access your data. With teams of people, millions of dollars in investment, and a total commitment to data security, we feel that your data is safer within a HomeAway Software system than it would be in a drawer in your own home. Of course, in these days of technical privacy, the bad guys are constantly trying to steal data (it happened to our friends at TripAdvisor recently) so our team doesn’t get to rest on its laurels. Data protection is a 24/7 activity at HomeAway, Inc.

You can find our privacy policy on any of our websites like this one on HomeAway.com: http://www.homeaway.com/info/about-us/legal/privacy-policy

But let me make it very clear. The contract we have with you is quite simple: HomeAway will never access or use any data that you have not given us permission to use. One source of confusion may be the area of copyright and copyright protection. When you place a listing on a HomeAway website, in order for us to legally display your content, we need your permission. Thus our terms and conditions require that you assign copyright to us for as long as the listing is live on the website. This is not a data privacy issue (because you’ve already chosen to make the listing public by putting it on the website) but it is a data protection issue. By assigning copyright, you simply authorize us to display your data, and give us the authority to protect your data from being stolen from our websites and displayed without your permission someplace else on the web. The ownership of the data is never transferred. Copyright assignment is the only way we can force third parties who have “scraped” our listings to take them down. Some scrapers are just well meaning people who don’t know that listings are not free for the taking, but some are criminals, and we need to be able to protect you and your homeowners from people who would steal the listing data or try to use it for fraud. When the listing is no longer on the website, the assignment is cancelled. If you are the author of the data, that data belongs to you and you alone before, during, and after you have any listings live on HomeAway websites.

We had a number of customers tell us that they were concerned and surprised by the tone of some of the presenters and VRMA leaders. We appreciate the support expressed by so many of you. Instant, Escapia and HomeAway have long been contributors and supporters of the VRMA so we were just as surprised—and saddened—by the tone as were many of you. While we are happy to compete for your business and trust, it did strike us as unprofessional that the podium of VRMA was used to attack our company, our products, and the integrity of our people. More than 800 people work for HomeAway around the world: no company in the industry has as much invested—in dollars and in people—in the future of vacation rentals as does HomeAway. We’re proud to compare our commitment to professional vacation rental managers to that of any of our fellow VRMA members. After all, we count more than 4,000 professional property managers as customers.

Thank you for being one of them.

We know that what matters most to your business is the quality of your software and the level of service we provide. We are committed to building world-class products and providing peerless services to property managers. This is how all of us on the HomeAway Software for Professionals team spend our time. We’re excited to be part of building a strong and successful future for you and with you. And we’re always grateful for the support of our customers and friends as we work to achieve that goal.

Sincerely,

Stephan de Bernede

Sr. Director Marketing and Sales

Guiding Principle #5- We seek to improve the value our products provide

Instant Software — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 09:32:41 -0600

Volsky Blog: Our Commitment to Help Increase your ROI

Instant Software and Escapia ─representing the HomeAway Software for Professionals ─recognize the future opportunities for growth in the vacation rental industry and crafted our mission statement to steer decision-making to benefit rental managers.

This blog addresses the fifth and last of our mission statement objectives.

5. We will seek to improve the value our products provide. Our products and distribution is to continually increase your ROI. We aspire to build cost effective software products to meet your needs.

Our fifth guiding principle is simple enough to be almost trite. But we have good reason for hanging this on the wall to remind us of our goal.

We want all of our employees to stay grounded. Simply put, we don’t make money unless clients buy our products. Clients won’t adopt and continue using products that don’t generate a return on investment.

Our fifth guiding principle articulates the business logic for supporting multiple software reservation products. Would it be more efficient to maintain fewer types of reservation systems? Yup. But no single product fits everyone’s needs. We support many products in order to keep our many clients.

As you know this Internet world is all about interaction. The reservation systems are the foundations that store the details of every aspect of a manager’s operation. These operations integrate products and services of vendors who require service orders, payments, and real-time access to reservations.

But there are an increasing number of new opportunities. So, our fifth guiding principle fuels our aggressive efforts to find channel partners and integrate their businesses into our customers. Among other proven money revenue generators is travel insurance, electronic document signing and integrated guest review management.

As new listing sites emerge, our software(s) allow managers to connect with the most important of them.

We also help customers adapt to the ways consumers shop for vacation rentals:

Consumers rely on ratings of other renters as well as their experiences, so our products allow customers to integrate with other rental companies or institute their own rating systems.

Consumers love to share their vacation experiences through the Internet, so our products can be accessed by independent web-services companies that specialize in marketing through social media, Facebook and Twitter.

It is easy to get enthused by new technology. We do, and we encourage our employees to explore new options. But, by articulating our fifth principle, we task our employees to always evaluate new opportunities against a basic yardstick: “Will they help our customers make money?”

By publishing these Guiding Principles in our mission statement, we make a commitment that will set customer expectations of us, and remind our employees that we expect customers to hold us accountable for keeping our commitments.

Our Mission Statement: To deliver the category-leading software, distribution services and customer support to Professional Property Managers (PM) and Innkeepers.

In order to accomplish its mission, HomeAway’s software group developed five guiding principles to govern the business model:

Guiding Principles

1. Customer support is job one. We provide mission critical software for more than 10,000 professional users. When Property Managers and Innkeepers need our support, we must be there.

2. Data privacy and security govern how we build software. We are the safe-keepers of our customers’ proprietary data, and our methods must never place privacy or security of that data as a second priority. We have implemented a privacy policy for your protection, and we will abide by that policy.

3. Product functionality and simplicity will be our goal. We will be relentless in building cost-effective and feature-rich software, and we will make that software easy for customers to implement and to learn.

4. Open distribution serves the industry well. We will enable our PM customers to easily access consumer demand through as many channels as they choose.

5. We will seek to improve the value our products provide. Our products and distribution must continually increase your ROI. We will build the most cost effective software products that meet your needs.

Guiding Principle #4 - HomeAway Supports Open Distribution through All Channels.

Instant Software — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 09:09:05 -0600

This blog addresses the fourth of the Guiding Principles that shape the business roadmap at Instant Software/Escapia and sets a commitment to our customers:

Open distribution serves the industry well. We will enable our property manager customers to easily access consumer demand through as many channels as they choose.

Some rental managers give little thought to this issue. But I’ve spoken to a couple who asked whether HomeAway has a natural incentive to steer PM’s toward its own listing sites over other channel outlets.

Fair question, but the opposite is true. I think it is only necessary to “follow the money” to appreciate why HomeAway is committed to open distribution through all channels.

HomeAway is in the business of connecting homeowners and property managers with travelers who seek the space, value and amenities of vacation rental homes as an alternative to hotels. When the demand for vacation rental grows, HomeAway expects to be a primary beneficiary.

Multiple studies have concluded that more travelers would rent vacation homes if they knew more about them. Studies have also shown that first-time vacation home renters are inclined to use them again.

While HomeAway is the leading network of online vacation rentals, there are other large websites that cater to travelers. By helping PMs connect to third-party booking sites, HomeAway can leverage the brand recognition, marketing expertise and advertising budgets of mega-sized OTAs, tourism bureaus and independent websites to introduce vacation rentals to their regular clients, increasing the visibility of vacation rentals.

When property manager customers distribute inventory through third parties, they are seeking to place inventory on websites renters use. Consumer shopping behavior is key to why HomeAway’s fourth guiding principle equates to channel neutrality.

- Vacation homes must be on travel sites consumers patronize.
- It is the consumer who decides which channel outlet to use.
- The channels that appeal to travelers will change over time, and will always include sites not owned by HomeAway.
- Industry growth will be impeded if rental home inventory is confined to a few outlets.
- The largest and most successful online travel agents (e.g., Travelocity, Expedia, and Hotels.com) are showing interest in vacation rental homes.
- There are legions of other channel outlets that will want vacation homes.
- Suppliers of vacation homes must be positioned to deal with all of them.

Also, distribution links are technically challenging to build and require cooperation between reservation software companies and the distribution outlets. To justify the effort, distribution channels will want to work with reservation software providers who can deliver the widest possible range and greatest numbers of vacation rental homes.

This gives rise to common sense reasons why HomeAway will work hard to enable our PM customers to access outlets of their choice:

More PM’s will use HomeAway’s software and outlets if they know that:
- HomeAway reservation software and policies are channel neutral;
- HomeAway’s software will also feed outlets not owned by HomeAway;
- The users of HomeAway solutions won’t be arm-twisted to favor HomeAway distribution sites.
More channel outlets will invest in connecting to HomeAway solutions if our solutions support third-party channel outlets as well as HomeAway outlets.

You get the picture. Our fourth Guiding Principle is not just lip service. It is in HomeAway’s interests to enable its PM customer to access any channels they choose.

HomeAway Software for Professionals Partners with Seven New Distribution Channels to Expand Marketing Opportunities for Vacation Rental Managers

Instant Software — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:13:11 -0600

AUSTIN, TX, April 5, 2011 – HomeAway, Inc. - the worldwide leader in online vacation rentals - today announced the addition of seven online partners to the HomeAway Software for Professionalsä (HASP) Group, comprised of Instant, Inc. (Instant Software) and Escapia, Inc.

By using either ISILink from Instant Software or EscapiaNET, data hubs connecting reservation systems to the Internet and additional integrated business services, HASP customers can now choose from a network of more than 60 participating websites to advertise their properties and gain access to millions of travelers searching for property-managed vacation rentals online.

“More than ever, vacation rental managers recognize that their success depends on getting their homes in front of consumers searching online for vacation homes,” says Bill Furlong, General Manager of HASP. “We’re committed to making it easy to access the broadest possible online distribution so our customers can be the most successful in the business.”

The distribution partners joining or expanding their relationship with ISILink or EscapiaNET include:

JackRabbit Systems enhances the consumer booking experience and increases area bookings by developing online travel software for destination and travel portal websites.
ReserveMyHome.com's mission is to display, promote, and book verified nationwide short-term vacation rentals from Lake Tahoe to Orlando, FL and beyond. Having been in the property management, reservation and booking industry for over 25 years, the company provides services ranging from personable bookings, instant confirmations, rental contracts, driving directions, entry and key pickup instructions, plus more.
VintageEscapes.com offers a collection of professionally-managed luxury vacation rentals found in some of the most unique and exclusive locales around the world.
RentalSpot.com provides free listings to homeowners and agencies while allowing travelers to search vacation rental properties using a highly-intuitive map-based interface. Additionally, community members can easily collaborate with family and friends and rate properties they have rented.
HomesRetreat.com was founded by a former executive from Apartments.com. HomesRetreat.com came to be from the simple idea that people who love experiencing new places and the comforts of a home can go to one place and find everything they need.
CabinConnection.com is a regional travel site focused on the Smoky Mountains. In addition to listing vacation rentals, this site is rich in content with a wealth of information about various entertainment, attractions, the great outdoors and fun in the area.
ExclusiveGetawaysHawaii.com serves travelers searching for a memorable home in the Hawaiian Islands and recently expanded its existing partnership with ISILink by also participating in the EscapiaNET distribution program. Created and run by property managers, Exclusive Getaways Hawaii maximizes a prospect’s satisfaction and minimizes their effort in making an online vacation rental reservation.

“We’re thrilled to join the ISILink program,” says Ketan Thakker of HomesRetreat.com. “The programs offered by Instant Software give me the opportunity to serve hundreds of vacation rental managers with thousands of properties. Their real-time content, rate and availability information is critical not just to consumers, but to the success of managers listing their homes on our site.”

Distribution partners interested in learning more about ISILink and EscapiaNET should contact Katie Kratzig at kkratzig@instantsoftware.com. Instant Software and Escapia customers interested in taking advantage of more online distribution opportunities should contact their relationship managers at salesteam@instantsoftware.com. For more about HASP, visit www.instantsoftware.com and www.escapia.com.

For information contact:

Victor Wang
Public Relations Manager HomeAway, Inc.
Office- 512-505-1504
vwang@homeaway.com

About HomeAway, Inc.

HomeAway, Inc., based in Austin, Texas, operates the world’s largest online marketplace for the vacation rental industry, representing more than 525,000 paid vacation rental home listings throughout over 145 countries. HomeAway’s websites offer an extensive selection of vacation homes that provide travelers with memorable experiences and benefits, including more room to relax and added privacy, for less than the cost of traditional hotel accommodations. The company also makes it easy for vacation rental owners and property managers to advertise their properties and manage bookings online. The HomeAway portfolio includes the leading vacation rental websites HomeAway.com, VRBO.com and VacationRentals.com in the United States; HomeAway.co.uk and OwnersDirect.co.uk in the United Kingdom; HomeAway.de in Germany; Abritel.fr and Homelidays.com in France; HomeAway.es in Spain; and AlugueTemporada.com.br in Brazil.

In addition, HomeAway operates BedandBreakfast.com, the most comprehensive global site for finding bed-and-breakfast properties, providing travelers with another source for unique lodging alternatives to chain hotels. For more information about HomeAway, please visit www.HomeAway.com.

Guiding Principle #3 - Product functionality and simplicity will be our goal.

Instant Software — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:53:00 -0600

Product Functionality and Simplicity

by George Volsky

We will be steadfast in building cost-effective and feature-rich software, and we will make that software easy for customers to implement and learn.

HomeAway’s acquisition of Instant Software and Escapia prompted questions by customers and our staff. What would the acquisition mean? Recently, we issued Guiding Principles to instruct our staff and articulate our commitment to our customers.

This blog addresses the third of these: “Product functionality and simplicity is our goal.”

If I have learned anything from my years in this industry, it is software developers face endless challenges that tend to prevent their software from evolving in response to new trends or embracing new technology.

The pioneers in reservation software often tried unsuccessfully to migrate their products from DOS to Windows or from Windows to browser-based platforms. Often, these companies sold out because they lacked the resources to export their programs to new platforms or keep up with technology. Smaller companies often have real challenges here.

The HomeAway commitment is to be steadfast in building cost-effective and feature-rich software that is easy for customers to implement and to learn.

First, HomeAway brings additional resources to Instant Software and Escapia. HomeAway is able to apply revenue from its other operations to improve software (and profit opportunities) for vacation rental managers.

With this additional support, feature and usability modifications can be prioritized according to customer needs rather than operating profits.

HomeAway believes customer acquisition and retention will be best promoted by the delivery of products that serve customers’ needs.

We are intent on proving that HomeAway’s ability to fund product development and improve software will be an important competitive advantage for your company. By applying these resources to make your business work, we protect and promote ours.

This is a long-winded way of letting you know how happy we are about our longstanding commitment of product functionality and simplicity is no longer hampered by limited resources, and that HomeAway has embedded product functionality and simplicity as one of our key mandates and customer commitments.

Instant Software Releases January 2011 Vacation Rental Trend Report

Instant Software — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:24:25 -0600

Instant Software today released its January 2011 Trend Report for Professionally Managed Vacation Rentals.

Instant Software is pleased to announce the release of its January 2011 Trend Report. Instant Software has historically published a monthly Vacation Rental Trends Report, which has been made available to you and posted on our website. The report measures industry trends by region so that you can compare how other Property Managers perform region by region. The report includes amongst other things revenue from “arrivals” during the period and underlying year-to-year changes in the Vacation Rental industry. The data is harvested from property management companies who were using Instant Software’s management solutions and ISILink during the periods covered in the report.

Data Privacy Statement: Instant Software has historically published a monthly Vacation Rental Trend Report, which has been made available to you and posted on our website. The report measures industry trends by region so that you can compare how the industry performed region by region. The report includes, amongst other things, revenue from “arrivals” during the period and underlying year-to-year changes in the Vacation Rental industry. The data is harvested from property management companies who were using Instant Software’s management solutions and ISILink during the periods covered in the report.

Following the acquisition of the Instant Software business by Instant, Inc., our company will continue to publish these reports. We want all our customers to feel comfortable with our uses of the data we have access to through our management solutions and ISILink. We have adopted a Privacy Policy to clarify the data we gather and how we use it. The data used in the Vacation Rental Trend Report is anonymous and is aggregated to assist us in determining the information reported. Should you have any questions or if you would not like the information you make available to us through ISILink or our other solutions used in the preparation of the Vacation Rental Trends Reports, please email us.

Click Here to read the full January 2011 Trend Report.

Guiding Principle #2 - Data privacy and security govern how we build our software.

Instant Software — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:08:32 -0600

Data privacy and security govern how we build software.

We are the safe-keepers of our customers’ proprietary data, and our methods must never place privacy or security as a second priority.

HomeAway purchased Instant Software and Escapia in the closing months of 2010. As these acquisitions raised important customer privacy concerns, HomeAway quickly undertook a due diligence review

of the data usage policies that had prevailed at ISI and Escapia, asking the same questions that rental managers would be asking. HomeAway first audited the data storage and usage practices at Instant Software and Escapia to insure that customer data is not vulnerable to online theft or employee misuse. HomeAway is in process to impose its own additional security protocols and state-of-the-art technology protections.

HomeAway’s technical and organizational measures are designed to meet the standards of the world’s most trusted ecommerce corporations. HomeAway just published a new Privacy Policy on its websites. Be sure to read the entire policy, as it applies not only to Instant Software clients, but also to customers of all members of the HomeAway corporate family.

Trend Reports

We gather data from Instant Software customers who license ISILink or other Instant Software management solutions in order to prepare periodic reports or information, such as the Vacation Rental Trend Reports posted at www.blog.instantsoftware.com. We aggregate data to use in such reports and do not disclose any personal information. If you are an Instant Software customer do not want us to use your data, you may opt out by emailing us.

Instant Software Releases December 2010 Vacation Rental Trend Report

Instant Software — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:19:40 -0700

Instant Software today released its December 2010 Trend Report for Professionally Managed Vacation Rentals.

The Instant Inc. Research Center is pleased to release its November 2010 and December 2010 Vacation Rental Trend Reports. These reports measure revenue from “arrivals” during 2010 and underlying year-to-year changes in the Vacation Rental industry. The data is harvested from property management companies who were using Instant Software’s management solutions and ISILink, the

industry’s largest Web distribution system, during both 2009 and 2010. Since Instant Software’s solutions manage the greatest number of rental managers and vacation rental properties, it is the most accurate data available. These reports explore how changes in arrival revenues are tied to changes in length of stay, number of bookings, and advance booking time.

Data Privacy Statement: Instant Software has historically published a monthly Vacation Rental Trend Report, which has been made available to you and posted on our website. The report measures industry trends by region so that you can compare how the indusry performed region by region. The report includes, amongst other things, revenue from “arrivals” during the period and underlying year-to-year changes in the Vacation Rental industry. The data is harvested from property management companies who were using Instant Software’s management solutions and ISILink during the periods covered in the report.

Click here to read the full November 2010 Vacation Rental Trend Report and the December 2010 Vacation Rental Trend Report.

Guiding Principle #1 –Customer Support is Job One.

Instant Software — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:00:00 -0700

As we mentioned in our last blog, HomeAway’s software group developed five guiding principles to govern the business model. Over the next few weeks, we will take an in-depth look at each of these guiding principles and what they mean to Instant Software’s customers.

Guiding Principle #1: Customer support is job one. We provide mission critical software for over 10,000 professional users. When Property Managers and Innkeepers need our support, we must be

there.

For the past 20 years, Instant Software has been committed to providing the industry’s best customer support, and under HomeAway’s leadership, this commitment stands.

Dedicated Support Teams: Instant Software has dedicated support teams located in offices throughout the U.S. for each of its products, including PropertyPlus, Entech, First Resort and V12.NET.

Experience: No other solutions provider in the vacation rental industry possesses HomeAway and Instant Software’s industry experience and knowledge, and their support team fully understand when customers need support they need it quickly. Instant’s customers rent other people’s homes, condos, villas, and cottages, a complex and layered business different from hotels, because each property is unique and has a different ownership structure. Instant Software is focused on supporting its software to increase property managers’ profitability in this industry.

Training: Instant Software provides comprehensive training for its products. Whether a company brings new hires on board, promotes from within or continues to stay on the cutting edge of software changes, updates and new features, Instant Software’s training is thorough, professional, designed to help its customers maximize their software systems, and is offered both remotely and on-site.

Industry and Product Education: Dedicated to sharing its collective industry knowledge, Instant Software educates clients through monthly product tips and tricks, seminars, newsletters, webinars, events and articles. Instant Software also hosts REZFEST, the vacation rental industry’s leading technology conference and number one user experience, complete with product training and industry information. REZFEST was created to give customers a competitive edge and will be held this year on November 8-10, 2011, at Red Rocks Resort in Las Vegas, NV. Make sure to save the date for this can’t-miss user conference.

In 2011, Instant Software will be hosting breakfast seminars across the country designed to educate Property Managers on the latest news, trends and advancements in the vacation rental industry.

Account Managers: Instant Software is also increasing its level of support for its users by separating its sales and account management teams. Each Property Management Company will now have a dedicated Account Manager focused on supporting its needs and building the relationship between Instant Software and the PMC to partner for their collective success.

>>>Next: Guiding Principle #2 – Data privacy and security govern how we build software.

Instant Software Annouces Vacation Rental Breakfast Seminar Schedule

Instant Software — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:52:15 -0700

Instant Software, Escapia and HomeAway are hosting Vacation Rental Breakfast Seminars across the country, bringing you the latest vacation rental news and information to help you do better business in 2011. Check out the schedule below for a seminar close to you. Registration is free to Property Management Companies, but space is limited, so contact Abby May at 800-372-2742 to reserve your spot at this valuable educational opportunity.

Vacation Rental Breakfast Seminars:

Destin, FL

February 8, 2011

Orange Beach, AL

February 10, 2011

Pigeon Forge, TN
February 24, 2011

Kauai, HI
March 8, 2011

Oahu, HI
March 10, 2011

Outer Banks, NC
April 12, 2011

Wilmington, NC
April 14, 2011

S. Lake Tahoe, CA
April 21, 2011

Breckenridge, CO
May 5, 2011

Sunriver, OR
May 19, 2011

Seattle, WA
May 26, 2011