Idaho company LiveRez partners with Airbnb

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Idaho company LiveRez partners with Airbnb | Idaho Business Review

12/3/15, 8:11 AM

Idaho company LiveRez partners with Airbnb By: Benton Alexander Smith

December 3, 2015

0 The Idaho company LiveRez and the popular reservations website Airbnb have joined forces to compete in the growing vacation rental market. LiveRez has has about 4o employees in Eagle. Airbnb is one of the world’s biggest listing agencies for rentals, valued at $25.5 billion, LiveRez CEO Tracy Lotz said.

Shaun Stewart speaking at the 2015 LiveRez Partner Conference. Photo courtesy of LiveRez.

Despite its success and growth helping travelers find beds in cities and vacation spots around the world, Airbnb has not done well in traditional vacation markets. It performs strongly in urban environments such as New York and San Francisco, but not in vacation destinations such as Hawaii and Orlando, said Travis Hawkes,

whose PR agency Riverwood Strategies works for LiveRez. Vacation rentals are an area of opportunity, said Shaun Stewart, Airbnb’s head of vacation rentals, at a LiveRez 2015 Partner Conference in Sun Valley in October. In 2014, only 31 percent of available nights were booked, he said. “Vacation rentals are one of the biggest areas for growth,” Stewart said. “There is more happening in the daily news feed than I have ever seen before.” Airbnb’s leaders estimate the vacation rental market is worth $53 billion. They’ve watched as other companies have made aggressive moves to enter it. Expedia bought Orbitz and Travelocity in one eight-week period, and Expedia also recently purchased LiveRez’s biggest competitor, Home Away, for $3.9 billion. “I was something of a prophet,” Lotz said about Home Away. “Looking at the market I was able to say these guys would be bought by somebody big.” To strengthen its hold of the market, Airbnb established a vacation rental division in 2014 and named Stewart the head. Stewart had worked at Expedia for 10 years, and one of his first moves with Airbnb was to find a vacation software company that worked with clients in desired vacation locations. After examining 87 companies, Stewart chose LiveRez. LiveRez, which started in 2008 with only two clients, provides software to vacation rental managers. It’s expected to process over $1 billion in rental transactions in 2015, Hawkes said. On Nov. 20, it announced it had signed its 1,000th client. The partnership between Airbnb and LiveRez does not involve an exchange of money, but it gives Airbnb access to LiveRez’s vacation rental inventory. In return, LiveRez’s property managers are now listed on Airbnb. Lotz said he would not sign off on the deal until he and the property

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Tracy Lotz

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Idaho company LiveRez partners with Airbnb | Idaho Business Review

12/3/15, 8:11 AM

managers he works with gave Airbnb a list of 16 things they wanted to see change. The list included items to protect property managers such as raising cleaning fee caps and changing cancellation deadline policies. “They have done everything they said they would do,” Lotz said. “Everything they committed to doing has been done and that is huge to me. I feel I have a a responsibility to these property managers.” “The Airbnb integration gave us entry into a very visible market,” Lotz said. LiveRez has about 40 employees located in the Treasure Valley and about 10 who work remotely around the country. Lotz said that the partnership with Airbnb won’t prompt a move. “This is an Idaho company,” Lotz said. “I would burn this company to the ground before I moved it out of the area.”

ABOUT BENTON ALEXANDER SMITH Benton Alexander Smith is a reporter for the Idaho Business Review, covering new business, banks, financial services and technology.

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