I built the Lodgix.com application because I really disliked the Webervations product.  Their customer support was non existent, their interface was (and still is) dated and not functional, and the product itself barely met the minimum standards for an availability calendar -  and online booking was out of the question.

I tried a couple of other products (all of which were very expensive), and in the end I gave up and decided to code it myself.  The result was Lodgix.com and my vacation rental business has been going gang busters ever since.

Initially, I thought that maybe 5-7% of my business would use the online booking functionality.   In my mind, it was the innovative availability calendar and its ability to show real time availability for years in advance, that would reduce phone calls and increase reservations.

However, I’ve been shocked at the response of the online booking component.   I would estimate that roughly 40% of my bookings are now originating online.  Additionally,  I am amazed at the number of guests who book online who have never called or emailed me.  Granted, my website is very thorough and full of information, but in many instances these are $4000+ reservations, and I just never would have guessed that someone would book that sort of reservation online without wanting to talk or email with me first.

Here is a screenshot of the email reservation notifications I’ve received from Lodgix.com in the last 4 months:

Take tonight for example, I woke up at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I went downstairs, made myself a sandwich and decided to get an early start on clearing out my emails before heading into the office on Monday. Lo and behold, I had two Lodgix.com pending reservation notifications in my inbox that came in while I was sleeping. One of those reservations had emailed me once a few days ago with some more questions. The other reservation had no previous history and just came in out of the blue.

Would I have gotten both of those reservations without Lodgix.com? Possibly yes and possibly no. Why? This weekend was Father’s Day weekend. I spent the weekend with my family and not tied to my email or phone. Thus, my response times for any vacation rental inquiries were slower, if not delayed completely. In the past during times when my response times were delayed, even if just by a few hours, many times by the time I returned the guests email or phone call I either never heard back from them or they would tell me that they had already booked a place somewhere else. That doesn’t happen any longer. Today I get those reservations thanks to the online booking calendar from Lodgix.com.

The net result is that my local vacation rental competitors are hurting. This recession has really affected them this summer. Not me. I am having the best summer season ever. It’s a testament to the power of online booking, and the power of empowering your guests to make their reservation immediately, easily and quickly.

If you are a vacation rental property owner, don’t underestimate the power of providing an online booking and availability calendar component for your guests. Not only will you generate high occupancy rates and realize increased revenues, but you’ll also be amazed at how much time a web-based vacation rental property management solution can save you.

Call me at 877-593-2083 x3 or email sales@innfirst.com, I’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have or give you a hand in setting up your properties if you decide to try the free 30 day trial.

Initially,  Lodgix.com was built to be a low cost, web based hospitality management platform for vacation rental and B&Bs with up to 20 properties or 20 rooms.    However, over the course of the last six months I’ve been working with several property managers and CondoTel owners who have buildings with hundreds of  condos that they manage.  Like a hotel, each of these “condos” operates very similar to a hotel room, in the sense that when guests book they don’t know which condo they are renting,the actual condo is assigned to the guest after the reservation is made, many times not until the guest actually checks in at the property management office.

The property manager or CondoTel owner is most concerned with maximizing occupancy.  To maximize occupancy there are several requirements:

1)  Robust and flexible booking logic which assign guests to rooms / condos.  At the property manager’s request, the booking logic must be able to shuffle reservations to assure maximum occupancy.    Likewise, some repeat guests will probably request specific rooms or units, so those reservations need to have the flexibility to be “fixed” and left out of the shuffle.

Likewise, the application must be smart enough to look at a block of rooms / units and then assign a new reservation to the best unit which results in maximum occupancy.

2) Booking calendar which shows all available dates and units.  Most online booking systems ask the guest to enter an arrival date and then the system returns which units are available (if any) for that date.   This has always frustrated me, because in most instances I have found the room or property that I want and I am flexible on my arrival date.  I simply want to know when it’s available and at what price.

Using traditional multi-unit / multi-room calendars this is not possible.  I have to literally go through day by day to see if the property or room I want is available.  Lodgix solves all that, by providing a booking calendar that displays all the rooms / units on the left and the calendar on the right.

Take a look:
Utilizing our booking calendar, a property owner or manager won’t lose those guests who are flexible in their dates.  In fact,  initial results are showing property owners are increasing their booking y 15-25% just by adding an online booking component to their website.  I’ll be writing more on these results in a later post.

In summary, if you are a CondoTel  property owner or manager, or a property manager managing up to 100 properties in multiple locations,  please try out Lodgix.com for the free 30 day trial period.  We’ll gladly walk you through the property setup and setup several of your properties for you to get you started.

Thanks to all who helped with their feedback and patience during Phase I of the soft launch of Lodgix.com.  We are now actively accepting new vacation rental and B&B owners   However,  all new customers need to be patient and understand that there is still a great deal of bug fixing and tweaking going on with the application.

We are a small company with a limited budget and a talented development team.   We look at ever suggestion, every piece of feedback, every bug report and make some tough decisions on what is most important in the short term to make the product the most useful for the great number of people.

The primary faults of the current application are:

1. Help files and help resources remain limited
2. Small interface glitches remain
3. Occasional bug pops up after code updates
4. Lack of decent reporting

I try and counter that with very fast, very personalized customer service.   In many instances if you encounter a bug, I’ll have it fixed within hours.  If you suggest a feature or enhancement that to me is a “must have” for the majority of folks, I’ll prioritize it and make it happen within 7-14 days.

One of the current customers has made four great suggestions in the past few weeks and all of those suggestions have been implemented and the application is better becaue of it.

A couple of recent feature requests that were great, but which I cannot support for another couple of months are enhanced support for property managers and multi-lingual support.    Both are relatively simple items, but require 4 weeks or so total development time.  So those will be put on the back burner until 2009.

Please feel free to fill out the Contact Us form and drop me an email with any questions you may have.  That email will go directly into my help desk software and I’ll get back to you with an answer ASAP!

Thanks again for your patronage and support!

Brent M. Kleinheksel
Owner, Lodgix.com

Do you own a vacation rental? Maybe you own several? Are you looking for a cost effective way to manage your guests, manage your staff, take bookings online, show availability and increase your bookings? Look no further, because Lodgix.com may be exactly the all encompassing solution you seek.

Lodgix.com has taken 1000s of man hours and over 11 months to test and develop. It’s been developed by a marketing professional, who owns, manages and markets vacation rentals. The product is coded using the latest web technologies and has been developed to be both cost effective and easy to use.

So many vacation rental software companies today charge per unit or per reservation. These systems are designed to penalize your business for being successful. Our system charges a flat, low monthly fee, regardless of how many units or rooms you own. Charging per reservation is another great way that many software companies attempt to nickel and dime their customers. It’s a confusing system, that makes money for the software company at the expense of the property owner.

Our US $19.99 per month package is the most competitively priced, full featured package of any vacation rental software provider.

To see an example of a small, 6 unit resort that is using the Lodgix.com platform, please visit their online booking and availability page:

http://www.rosewoodpointe.com/availability.htm

This page is an examples of how a property owner with multiple properties can easily embed a calendar directly into their website to show real time availability and take bookings directly from their website.

They also have the option of linking to the availability calendar on the Lodgix.com website:

http://www.innfirst.com/rosewoodpointe/

Next week, I’ll show more examples of how Rosewood Pointe can link their individual unit to their corresponding calendars, rather than displaying the multi-unit calendars.