RezFest 2008 ended Saturday, September 20th with hundreds of guests, many of whom commenting that it was the most informative and educational event in the Vacation Rental industry. This year’s conference produced several significant announcements, including:
Instant Software, Inc.’s (ISI) announcement of Instant Analysis, a new business intelligent tool that collects and organizes reservations data so users can access vital stats and make informed business decisions. Because ISI has the nation’s largest client base and manages the most reservation transactions, Instant Analysis will become the Vacation Rental industry’s only reliable source of trend data.
ISI’s integrated guest review service (powered by FlipKey) is up and running for several clients and within less than three weeks generated over 4000 guest reviews on 1500 Vacation Rental properties.
ISI Clients can now use electronic signature technology directly through ISI Business Management solutions as a result of two new alliances announced at the conference (Docusign and Recombo). Guests have the ability to sign and return documents electronically in real-time to reduce the time, hassle, and staff costs associated with traditional manual signing requirements. (More information will be available in November’s Insider Newsletter)
ISI Clients can use an outsourced integrated Call Center through ICE to which overflow or after hours calls get re-directed so they never miss a reservation, and all information flows to and from their ISI Reservations and Business Management Solutions. (More information will be available in November’s Insider Newsletter)
Leading Online Channel Partners for Vacation Rentals, web development firms, and AMEX presented vacation rental industry trends and statistics collected through 1000’s of online transactions, such as an increase in shorter stay requests, growth in the number of last minute bookings, price sensitivity in the market, the effectiveness of deals and promotions and best practices for SEO and SEM efforts.
Dave Berkus delivered a keynote presentation about the top trends in technology and how Vacation Rental managers should prepare for the future.
ISI announced 100’s of new features and enhancements in its market leading solutions for the Vacation Rental industry which include V12.NET, PropertyPlus, Entech, First Resort, and ISILink, and explained how ISILink has evolved into the only true Global Distribution System (GDS) for the Vacation Rental industry.
“We’d like to sincerely thank all of our guests, sponsors, and presenters who attended this year’s RezFest, one of the most memorable and exciting conferences we’ve ever had,” says Dave Hopcroft, CEO of Instant Software, “despite the difficult economy and several hurricanes affecting markets with high concentrations of Vacation Rental companies, we exceeded our expectations by having our 2nd most attended event in ISI’s 14 year history.”
RezFest is Instant Software’s annual conference regarded as the premier conference for the Vacation Rental industry. The RezFest Conference is built upon years of success as the best attended, most informative and friendliest networking conference. 2008 marks the 4th Annual RezFest and nearly 20 years of User Forums. Instant Software brings together clients of its market leading solutions, First Resort, Entech, PropertyPlus, V12.NET and ISILINK, for three days of education, resources and networking covering Industry Trends, Channel Partners, and Best Practices.
In addition to industry-level education, RezFest offers a full schedule of classes, hands-on labs, roundtable discussions and presentation panels on each of the Instant Software products. Attendance is exclusively available for Instant Software clients and partners. Many of the presentations and announcements from RezFest 2008 will be posted on Instant Software’s website at www.InstantSoftware.com. If you would like to learn more about the conference and how you can attend next year, please contact Instant Software directly at 866 PHONE ISI (866-746-6347).
Back to October 2008 Insider Newsletter