The rental market for tourist houses and apartments is on the rise. In fact, the sector is expected to register an annual growth of 10% from 2022. "There will be more and more demand for companies that manage houses and apartments of this type," says Pol Aracil, a graduate in Business Administration and Management of Innovation at the TecnoCampus and founder of the startup Winahost, an online agency dedicated to home sharing and tourist and seasonal rentals.
Based in the Mataró TecnoCampus incubator, Winahost offers a comprehensive service that goes beyond traditional platforms and connects bidirectionally with Airbnb, Booking, Holidu and Trypadvisor among others.
According to Aracil, the differential value of Winahost is its specialization in tourist and temporary accommodation, as well as the fact of "taking advantage of technology to offer a collaborative model that benefits both owners and guests, we offer end-to-end services. end, both pre-booking and post-booking (such as cleaning and check-in and check-out management)”.
The idea of Winahost was born as a response to a “family need”, according to Aracil. A relative of his had a property on the Costa Brava and, not using it, he wanted to convert it into a tourist rental. "I proposed to do it through Airbnb, and from here we saw a sector that could be made profitable."
This entrepreneur began looking for management companies for this type of service and observed that those that existed were very focused on specific areas such as S'Agaró or Begur in the case of the Costa Brava, but that there was no website that offered more centralized. Especially, he saw that aspects such as the maximization of reservations, the management of centralized calendars and prices, delivery of keys or cleaning was where the service could be improved, which in other agencies was more inefficient. From here he began to develop the Winahost project.
This innovative digital agency offers owners a centralized management of all these services, so that they can not worry about renting their property or about procedures such as check-in. Winahost also handles calendar management and guest service.
A few months ago, and thanks to the encouragement of the TecnoCampus, they participated in the 4YFN event, which for them was "a unique opportunity to give visibility to a project that has great growth aspirations," according to Aracil.
In fact, the creators of Winahost have set themselves the goal of being the benchmark digital agency in Spain and southern Europe. To do this, they are expanding throughout the territory creating what they call "collaborator hubs": it consists of creating agreements with local collaborators who are in charge, in each area, of procedures such as cleaning or check-in.
At the moment, during 2022 they plan to manage a volume of €500,000 in reserves, and they are optimistic about the company's growth. In fact, they are currently in the initial phase of seeking private financing to speed up the project.
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