VRWS Leadership Interview of the Day

How would you describe your career path and what brought you to Avantio?

“I’m coming from the tech world originally, but more focused on the mobile phone, apps and interactivity related industries. But, I’ve always been a huge traveler and backpacker and an early user of different types of hospitality (hostels, couchsurfing and then hotels, apartments etc.). I still remember when in 2009 a friend of mine from Barcelona recommended Airbnb to me as a new platform to book an apartment;) “Check this website man. It’s very nice! I heard very good things about it”;)) hahaha That was 13 years ago! So, I arrived in Avantio in 2015. First, I decided to settle down in Valencia that I chose because of the quality of life before anything. When I arrived back then, I was working remotely as a consultant for a Brazilian company. When I finally decided to stay for real in Valencia, I found Avantio which was for me a very good mix in between my tech sales background and the vacation rental industry that I knew as a user so far, but that I was already a big fan of.
I started in Avantio as a French sales representative, and grew as a Head of Development for Portugal a year after. It was a very interesting and successful experience, since we managed to take the leadership of this market in a very efficient way. Then, I got Head of Business Development for Europe. So, I would say that I’m totally passionate about my profession and the industry itself. And, this passion being reflected in my everyday job, Avantio, as a meritocratic company, has always known very well how to feed this passion and ambition giving me more responsibilities everytime.
To conclude, I am very happy to work in Avantio and the secret of this happiness is to be able to feel excited to go to work in the same way, from the very first day until today, 7 years later.”

Why Avantio’s rental management software became the Preferred Partner of global OTA such as Airbnb and Booking.com?

“First, I would say that the passion of the people that compose Avantio is real and you can see it in the everyday work that is getting done by the many different departments of the company. From the customer care service to the most focused technical and product teams. Avantio today has 130 employees.
We are Preferred Partner of all the main OTAs (Airbnb, Booking but also VRBO and many more) because the whole relationship is very well managed. From the Partnership department that Cesar Augusto is heading, until the connectivity tech team and our connectivity specialists in constant contact with our customers, we are managing to respond fast to the OTAs needs in terms of API developments requirements, business goals to achieve and customer satisfaction. We make sure that all the property managers who use Avantio as a Channel Manager, can get the most out of the connections they use. Not only in terms of compatibility of connection but, and over all, in terms of performance. Make sure our customers can get as many bookings as possible from the OTAs using Avantio Channel Manager. This is our real mission! It is a Win-Win-Win relationship between our customers (first), the OTAs, and Avantio.”

The new Avantio Channel Manager option has been launched towards the end of 2021: what’s new for property managers?

“Wow! Many many news features! Where should i start;))

First, our channel manager has always been a reference worldwide in our industry. But, our responsibility is to continuously provide the best technology to our customers. So, that means to renovate and optimize our technology constantly. And, effectively, we have recently launched our new Channel Manager Pro.
Apart from being a new and stronger technology behind it that guarantees to our customers the best of the technology for the coming years in terms of robustness, compatibility and performance, we obviously enjoyed the opportunity to add many extra features and a brand new mobile friendly User Interface and User Experience (UX).
So, you’ll find in our new Channel Pro many graphs that provide data on bookings, on which OTA is performing the best, on which property is performing the best, from where the guests are coming from etc..
And we launched a totally tailored and personalized bunch of features that allow you to manage and create strategies not only per portal but per property per portal. So you can have different discounts and/or supplements, releases for every property on every portal. Basically you can commercialize your listings in the best possible way according to the type of guests of each OTA. It is definitely very advanced and revolutionary.”

VRWS 22 is about to land in Porto. What do you expect from the overall experience?

“For me, the VRWS is the most representative event of our industry worldwide. And taking place in one of our main markets this year, Portugal, it is a pleasure and a privilege to sponsor the event.

We are expecting to connect with people again after being isolated for so long due to Covid. We are expecting to meet with professionals from all levels of our industry, to take the real temperature of the markets. Identify the new needs and trends directly from the key players of the vacation rental world. The VRWS is the best opportunity to do a total immersion into the industry and get all the latest news, trends and directions to follow. For sure, we’ll also be very happy to create new opportunities and meet property managers searching for a good PMS and a Channel Manager that can help them grow their business and be their technological partner for the future.”