.svg "Horizontal Logo (1)")
Meet Lodgify, Breezeway's newest integration partner! We connected with Marisa Rivera, Partnerships Manager at Lodgify, to uncover what makes the company unique, their vision for the vacation rental industry, and how to get the most out of the Lodgify and Breezeway integration.
Tell us about Lodgify!
Like many start-ups, Lodgify was created to help solve a personal need. After being asked to help their families with their vacation rental, co-founders Dennis Klett and Marco De Gregorio realized that no property management software allowed them to create a direct booking website easily. They decided to build the tool themselves, working their “real” jobs during the day and working on this new passion project by night. Then, in 2013, the Lodgify website was officially launched, allowing users to easily create their vacation rental websites that are directly integrated with a PMS, helping automate the admin side of the business. You can read more here!
The Lodgify mission is centered around one of our core values: “We empower.” Lodgify strives to create tools that empower our hosts to grow and scale their business efficiently while allowing users to create direct booking sites to rely less on large OTAs. As a company, the culture is based on the idea that we are “one mission-driven team,” making sure that all departments, squads, tribes, and teams are working together towards a common goal.
How many different tools and technologies does Lodgify integrate with?
Lodgify currently has 34 integrations on our marketplace, including internal “extension” tools and external integrations. Regarding our marketplace, we’ve taken a slightly different approach than other PMSs, prioritizing quality over quantity. Rather than having an overcrowded marketplace with overwhelming options, we’ve prioritized adding tools that we know will add value to our customers and their businesses.
Why do you think managers have expanded their technology stack in recent years?
We’ve seen a rise in our customers’ tech stack over the years, and we believe it stems from a need for automation as a business grows. Many small steps go into a vacation rental business that must be timed perfectly for the system to flow correctly. And while, as a PMS, we try to deliver on all the technical needs our users are asking for, we aren’t expert trust accountants or insurance brokers, so offering a marketplace where our users can go shopping and easily connect with a trusted professional is becoming even more important to fill in the gaps within our product.
How does Lodgify impact the guest experience, and why is this important?
Guest experience is a big one! It culminates in increased expectations from guests to have a bed to sleep in and a unique experience when they travel. Also, there is pressure from OTAs and our online review culture to keep the top host status and avoid low-star reviews at all costs.
Lodgify helps in many ways, but the most impactful is creating the space for quick and direct guest communication with our unified inbox, letting our users manage all guest messages from one place, and reducing response times. Users can also set up AI-powered messages that draft responses with information already on their rental page, set up saved replies for those repeat questions, or set up automated messaging workflows to give guests more information or collect reviews.
Our marketplace partners also help us with the guest experience space. Our users can easily connect with apps such as Breezeway that allow them to create dynamic guidebooks that give guests the information they need before, during, and after their stay, and easily manage turnover cleaning and maintenance tasks between stays so everything is perfect for the incoming guest.
How would you differentiate Lodgify's capabilities from other PMS tools?
Lodgify’s story started with our easy-to-use website builder, and it remains one of our main products to this day, a full decade later! We empower our hosts to become independent from OTAs and allow them to register their website domain and publish an independent website. The website builder offers various templates so users can customize their site to look how they want it to look. Of course, some of our users are extra savvy, so we also have a booking engine or widget that our users can embed into other website CMS tools like WordPress if they want to create their sites from scratch. We’ve seen that other PMSs recently have started offering direct booking websites as well, but they are limited and have more of a “plug and play” type design, whereas with our tool, users have more customization options.
How does Lodgify help STRs scale their business and save time? Are there any interesting trends you’re seeing for this busy season?
Like any software, Lodgify helps our users automate tasks that would otherwise be manual and take up lots of time. With Lodgify, our users have an all-in-one centralized tool kit that helps them streamline the tasks that go into running a business, freeing up more time to add more inventory or further develop in a specific area of their business, like providing a better guest experience.
What do you think the future looks like for the vacation rental industry? What opportunities and challenges lie ahead?
Recently, many restrictions have been put in place across the globe for short-term rental businesses. From Barcelona to British Columbia, local governments are putting laws restricting our industry and, in turn, causing a reduction in the market, which we’ve already started to see. There seems to be a shift towards the hotel sector, being pushed by governments and guests tired of paying a cleaning fee and being asked to take out the trash. But as Ross from the TV show Friends famously screamed PIVOT! These challenges will only light the fire for our industry to evolve and further unite our community.
How can a vacation rental operator get up and running with Lodgify?
Easy! Just reach out to our sales team if you want a demo or have any questions, sales@lodgify.com, or simply start a free trial here.
What’s one key takeaway people should know about Lodgify, and where can they go to learn more?
At Lodgify, our customers come first, and we listen to their needs to create a useful tool for them to add value to their business. You can visit our About Us page to hear more about our values and mission, check out our "Lodgify Turns 10” blog to read about our history or visit our website to learn about our product offering.
Visit our integration page to learn more about how Breezeway and Lodgify work together.