The vacation rental industry is large and growing with over 1 million vacation homes in the US market. The property management market serving the vacation rental industry is fragmented and primarily comprised of small local operators. While the entry barriers to providing vacation rental services are relatively low many new providers fail because they lack the technology, marketing infrastructure and operating experience to successfully compete in an increasingly competitive industry.
Primo Destinations, LLC has created a franchise platform for property managers, seeking to enter the vacation rental business, which empowers a local operator with the infrastructure, marketing support and operating processes to successfully compete with the best providers in the market and grow a profitable vacation rental business.
The Primo franchise platform consists of five important elements:
Branding: A national brand, logo and market recognition
Marketing: Centralized property marketing and reservation management
Technology: An integrated property management technology platform
Operations: Vacation rental operating processes, procedures and training
Finance: Financial services including payment processing and tax payment
This platform provides value to a franchisee in the following ways:
National brand:
- Primo Destinations is marketed as a national brand for luxury properties not unlike the franchisee model of Marriott Hotels. This creates immediate credibility for the franchisee as they seek to secure new clients in their local territory especially in the start-up phase.
- Promotion of a national brand is expected to result in bookings and reservations from repeat Primo Destination guests as they travel into franchisee territories increasing the franchisees revenue.
Property marketing and reservation management:
- Primo provides franchisees centralized marketing and reservations management, allowing the franchisee to focus on the delivery of services to the local property and guest management. Included at no additional expense as part of the 12% franchisee fee Primo will provide:
o Design of each listing (based on input from franchisee) including property description, picture upload, attributes and a market based rate table.
o A state of the art website including property search and on-line booking functionality complete with credit card processing, electronic contracts and signature capture.
o Five channels of web-based advertising.
o Individual property search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing including Google pay per click advertising.
o Full reservation management, booking and rent collection
Centralized reservation management greatly reduces both: 1) the marketing investment the franchisee would need to make and; 2) the overhead required to run a vacation rental business. Online booking both increases revenues and decreases the liabilities associated with rental process with the use of electronic documents and signatures.
Integrated property management technology platform:
- Primo provides franchisees a fully integrated vacation rental technology platform with the following features:
o Listings on the Primo Destinations website www.primodestinations.com
o A cloud-based property management system
Properties
Reservations
Guests
Inquiries
Calendar
Work orders
o Integrations to 3rd party listing services (i.e. VRBO, FlipKey, Airbnb etc.)
o A state of the art mobile app for guest management
Primo levels the playing field for our franchisees by providing web-based technology that rivals the capabilities of even the best resourced larger companies. Primo provides turnkey technology to get your vacation rental company up and running immediately with no capital investment in technology.
Vacation rental operating processes, procedures and training:
- As Primo Destinations local operating franchise you will be responsible for customer acquisition and local property management. Primo will provide you an operating manual detailing our best practices, marketing materials and on-site operations training to help ensure your success.
Topics include but are limited to:
o Sales
Lead generation
Proposal development
Rental analysis and projections
Contracts
o Operations
Guest management
Keys and locks
Housekeeping
Maintenance
Vendor management
Concierge
Owner communications
o Administration
Personnel
Payroll
Vehicles and branding
Work order management
Inventory
Accounting
Proven operating practices will help you achieve higher levels of guest satisfaction
Financial services:
- Primo provides accounting services to streamline and simplify the vacation rental process for franchisees including:
o A credit card processing facility and all rental payments
o Sales and local tax payment and reporting
o Monthly owner statements and a web-portal
o Owner and franchisee payments
- Reliable and auditable financial services ensure accurate reporting and prompt owner payments allowing the franchise to operate in compliance with state and local tax authorities and with minimal financial overhead.
A Primo Destinations franchise lowers the risk and improves the profitability of starting a vacation rental business by:
- Greatly reduce the costs of starting a vacation rental company due to the fact the technology, reservation and marketing function and people will be provided by Primo as the Franchisor. The goal is for a franchisee to be able to get up and running for between $39,970 – $77,000 (as per the Franchise Disclosure Document) vs. the $250,000 plus investment normally required
- Decrease the time from business creation to the ability to go to market by eliminating the need to develop the technology and providing support to enable the franchisee to immediately begin marketing and securing rental customers
- Increase the probability of the success of the new venture through the use of proven best practices, operating procedures and support from a leading vacation rental provider; and the provision of property marketing and reservation management which if not performed well can negatively impact business growth and referral potential.
- Achieve profitability more quickly due to lower overhead based on support services