The technology and commercial deals are falling into place to accelerate the professionalization of online vacation rental marketing.
The latest proof is that RedAwning, a vacation rental network and a marketing service, has acquired Leavetown Vacations, a company that has helped property owners market their multi-unit rentals to consumers.
The companies kept terms for the all-cash deal quiet. Leavetown, founded in Canada in 2008 and with about 25 employees, had raised a Series A investment of an undisclosed amount from venture firm 7 Gate last fall.
RedAwning, which will have about 250 employees after the deal, builds websites for properties and markets them under its RedAwning brand on consumer booking platforms, such as Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, HomeAway, VRBO, and TripAdvisor’s Flipkey. It will add Leavetown’s inventory to its network.
The key to the deal
Of note, the Vancouver-based Leavetown had built technological interfaces meant to appeal to the overseers of multi-unit properties.
In contrast, Emeryville, California-based RedAwning has primarily focused on serving traditional vacation rentals, such as standalone houses.
Broader industry tech merge
One central difference between the category of tools can be summed up by representation-level connectivity, used by typical hotels, and key-level connectivity, used by classic vacation rentals.
Technology issues get blurred when the owner of an aparthotel, condo building, corporate housing, or multi-unit resort needs to market and distribute a property differently and doesn’t want to have to duplicate its content or workflows. Until now, companies have had to, for example, use RedAwning and Leavetown separately to market and distribute rooms because of the connectivity differences of key-level and rep-level.
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