Ten Years of Rethinking the Deposit Process

1. Swikly is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and the event is taking place right in Lyon, your home city. Looking back at a decade of building the brand, what has changed most in how you communicate Swikly’s value to property managers, and what has stayed constant?

Celebrating Swikly’s 10th anniversary in Lyon is quite symbolic. This is where the company was born, and welcoming the industry here during VRWS feels like bringing everyone home.

For ten years now, we have been helping property managers save time. Today, everything in the guest journey is digitalized: booking, check-in, payments, communication. Everything except the deposit process, which too often remains manual, stressful and time-consuming. That’s exactly where Swikly comes in, and our communication has evolved to reflect this: it has become much more educational, through webinars, partnerships and real-life use cases, always focused on concrete operational challenges.

What has stayed constant is our commitment to customer service. From day one, we have made a point of staying close to our property managers, listening to their needs and supporting them on a daily basis. Tools and formats have changed over the years, but that closeness has never moved an inch.

2. Swikly’s 2026 Observatory, based on feedback from over 200 industry professionals, identifies deposit management as a structural issue in vacation rentals rather than a simple administrative task. As CMO, how do you turn that kind of research into a marketing asset without it reading as self-serving?

The key was to start from the field, not from our product. The Observatory is built on real conversations our teams had with more than 200 professionals between 2024 and 2026. We didn’t write a theory and then look for numbers to support it. We simply consolidated what property managers were already telling us, in their own words.

That’s also why the findings go far beyond Swikly. The five lessons cover very concrete realities: multichannel fragmentation, friction with international travelers, the rise of mid-term stays, unclaimed damages and extras, and the definitive end of cash and checks. These are structural challenges that touch cash flow, team workload and guest experience, whether you work with us or not. 

And as always, this is an ongoing process. We stay in constant contact with our clients, and we love taking part in trade shows like VRWS, precisely to keep collecting feedback from the field and adjust our solutions accordingly.

3. Swikly operates in a niche that sits at the intersection of fintech and hospitality. From a marketing perspective, how do you build trust with property managers around a financial product in an industry where most operators are not financially sophisticated?

Our strategy has always been to make trust tangible at every touchpoint. In an industry where operators are experts in hospitality rather than finance, our marketing has to do the translation work: we communicate in the language of their daily operations, time saved, disputes avoided, smoother guest experience, rather than in financial jargon. The value has to be understood in ten seconds, without a finance background.

A key pillar of that strategy is our ecosystem. We are natively integrated with the leading PMS platforms of the sector, and that changes everything in terms of credibility. When property managers discover Swikly through a tool they already use and trust every day, or through a partner they already work with, the trust barrier drops considerably. And beyond visibility, working with the biggest players of the industry proves something very concrete: even in a niche market, our product and our technology meet the standards of the leaders. That’s also why co-marketing is so central in our strategy.

And finally, we amplify peer proof. Property managers trust other property managers, so we put our clients at the center of our communication: testimonials, use cases, conversations at trade shows like VRWS. Our role as marketers is to create the spaces where those exchanges happen. In the end, the best way to build trust around a financial product is to let the industry itself vouch for you.

4. You came to Swikly from a fintech startup, with a background in M&A and credit risk analysis before that. How does that analytical background shape the way you approach growth and brand strategy?

I think my analytical background shapes everything I do, sometimes without me even realizing it. Coming from a financial background, I was trained to look at numbers before narratives, to question assumptions and to always ask what the data actually says. In marketing, that translates into a very performance-driven approach: every campaign, every webinar, every partnership has to be measurable. I want to know what works, what doesn’t, and why, so we can invest our resources where they truly create value.

It also gives me a 360-degree view of the business. I understand what the company needs strategically and how marketing can help move it in that direction. With my background, I naturally build bridges with sales, finance and product: I think in terms of pipeline, conversion and customer lifetime value, not just in terms of visibility or engagement. And it changes the way I build marketing itself. For me, marketing is a consequence of analysis: I start from the voice of the customer, from a user pain point or from something the market needs to understand, and that’s what drives my marketing decisions and ensures the right messages get through. I’m also very conscious of what marketing costs the company, so I’ve learned to be extremely creative to deliver great things with little budget ! 

That said, the fintech startup experience taught me the other half of the job: speed and pragmatism. In a startup, you can’t wait for perfect data to make a decision. You test, you learn, you iterate. So I would say my approach to growth combines both: the rigor of an analyst, and the agility of a startup marketer. And in a niche market like ours, where every euro invested has to count, that combination is a real asset.