VRWS Leadership Interview of the Day
In approaching the 9th edition of the Vacation Rental World Summit, we’re releasing a series of interviews to leaders, key players and highly motivated people in our industry whose companies make a deep impact in our space and will be present at VRWS.
The aim is to get you some insight into these leaders and the company they founded, manage or work for, as well as getting some behind the scenes on their thinking, their motivation and their drive.
XAVIER MARIN
How would you describe your career path and what led you to start Icnea?
“My family comes from the tourism sector, specifically from the hotel sector in the north of the Costa Brava, in Catalonia.
Personally, my studies in industrial engineering and computer science led me to the development of management software, a period in which we had great growth and expansion, and we developed some emblematic projects such as the Barcelona 92 Olympic Games.
In 2001 I had the opportunity to unite my two worlds, management software and tourism, and thus Icnea was born.
Since then we have specialized in the vacation rentals sector and have been growing and expanding functionalities and markets.”
You mention a lot of different countries in your LinkedIn summary. In which geographic areas do you see the highest growth potential for Icnea?
“Most of our clients are in Portugal, Spain, France, and Italy, and it is in these markets where we have a very significant growth rate. We also have a presence to a lesser extent in other countries in Europe and the Middle East. We have started our activities in Latin America, where we already have clients in several countries.”
Let’s say for the purpose of the interview that Icnea is exhibiting at an in-person event. A property manager approaches you to find out more. How would you describe the benefits Icnea provides?
“ICNEA is an ‘all in one’ solution for the vacation rentals management. By this we mean that we have fully integrated into a single solution the PMS, the Channel manager, the CRM, the Web, the catalog of activities and experiences, the integrations with locks, payment terminals, Pricing systems, and the APIs to be able to carry out other integrations. We also have extranets in APP format for mobiles, for owners, guests, cleaning, and maintenance staff.
We all know that integrated systems work better, with fewer incidents, than systems that bundle different solutions from different providers.
From a single application we can solve all the management needs of our clients.”
VRWS 22 is about to land in Porto. What do you expect from the overall experience?
“We hope to gain visibility in the Portuguese market, to make our brand known, and to get to know the market better. We are also expecting to have the opportunity to meet personally with our customers and suppliers.”
You’ll have the opportunity to meet Xavier and the Icnea team at VRWS on Sept 15th-16th
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