Lodgify out to drive direct sales to property rental owners with European launch

Barcelona start-up Lodgify, which offers bookable websites to holiday property owners, has launched in Europe.

Barcelona start-up Lodgify, which offers bookable websites to holiday property owners, has launched in Europe.

The move into the Spanish, German and Italian markets comes after a successful launch in the US.

Its product, Website Builder, gives owners the ability to create a website with a “book now” button and manage their reservations.

Lodgify is striving to increase bookings generated directly via the owner’s website, and help owners to become less dependent on commission-based listing sites and travel agencies.

Marco De Gregorio, co-founder of Lodgify, said: “Many European holiday rental businesses do not have their own functional website yet, even though we have learned from comparable sectors, such as the hotel industry, that this channel can account for 10-20% of bookings. That is a missed opportunity and we’d like to change that.”

Earlier this year, Lodgify was selected as one of the winners of Seedcamp London, Europe’s leading accelerator and mentoring program.

Since then it has developed its features, and is now offering its software and customer support in three additional languages including Spanish, Italian and German.

De Gregorio added: “The European holiday rental market has evolved into a $42 billion industry.

“However, it still underserved in terms of innovative and affordable technology for accommodation owners. Being a European team based in Barcelona, we would like to offer our technology to European holiday rental businesses in their own language.”

Lodgify offers scalable subscription plans based on a monthly fee for both holiday rental owners and managers with 1 to 500-plus properties.

The software-as-a-service includes mobile-friendly website templates, an online booking engine, reservation system and channel manager. Lodgify’s booking engine integrates with both Stripe and Paypal.