The Company's recent milestones include:
- Amassing over 1 Million instantly bookable Vacation Rental properties
- Positioned to supply major travel distributors with instantly bookable inventory
- Nearing completion of its first integration with a multi-billion dollar travel wholesaler
- Contracts in place to capture an additional 1 million properties including resort residence rentals
Monaker Group Inc. (OTC: MKGI) a technology-driven travel company, is focused on delivering innovation into the fast growth Vacation Home Rental/Alternative lodging rentals (ALR) market by supplying a business-to -business (B2B) platform that allows large travel distribution companies an immediate supply of properties in the format they are accustomed (i.e. instantly bookable).
According to Technavio, the ALR industry is expected to grow from its current $100 billion to $194 billion by 2021, making it one of the fastest growing sectors of the travel industry. Monaker expects to complete multiple integrations this year with many online travel distribution companies or OTAs including airlines, tour operators, travel retailers and travel agents through its B2B platform/proprietary booking engine. To date, main stream travel has watched the vacation rental markets boom and has not had any economic participation. Monaker brings the first B2B solution with significant global inventory to fit their model. As the company continues to expand its customer base by affording main stream travel distributors a "turnkey" solution to access its instantly bookable vacation rental inventory, Monaker stands to solidify a top position in ALR industry.
Monaker's B2B approach to bridge the main stream travel industry with the burgeoning ALR industry not only gives it a quick entry point with access to millions of traveling customers, but also eliminates the need for the company to spend millions of marketing dollars to attract users in a competitive landscape. As part of its model, the company aggressively worked towards addressing major pain points in the vacation rentals rental industry to ensure minimal issues and economic benefit for its travel distribution partners. This included tackling the two biggest problems faced by vacation rental seekers in the marketplace today being:
1) The response time to complete a booking (The norm in the industry today is for the renter to send a request to the homeowner with responses taking hours to days before confirming a booking).
And
2) The sticker shock once all "extra charges" are disclosed.
Monaker's properties are all instantly bookable and its pricing is "all inclusive". By contrast the leaders in the Vacation Rental industry (i.e. HomeAway, VRBO and Airbnb) all have platforms that are primarily "request/accept" with only a fraction of listed rental properties bookable instantly, making the process cumbersome for users. They also have multiple undisclosed fees that can move the final pricing of the vacation rental properties up as much as 70% above the initial pricing offer.
Monaker has ALR listing in over 100 countries, giving better choice to the travelers and ALL in an instantly bookable format. Currently, its inventory features approximately 1.4 million vacation rental properties, showing a steep increase from 1.2 million properties enlisted in the month of June. This inventory is comprised of private vacation homes, villas, chalets, apartments, condos and castles. Monaker expects to add several hundred thousand more properties to its online inventory this year, pushing Monaker into a similar scale (based on available inventory) as Airbnb, which is believed to have 2.5 million vacation rentals available on its website and HomeAway/VRBO estimated to have approximately 1.5 million rentals. With this milestone, the company further positions itself in the online travel market.
The company's technology and model includes future plans for making vacation planning easier for consumers by not only making the search process and interface more user-friendly and timely but to also include artificial intelligence (AI) options. It is believed that AI can reduce vacation planning time by up to 90% saving the average consumer 9 hours of research time.
Monaker Group is also focused on its corporate structure as it prepares for a potential exchange up-listing this year. To meet up-listing requirements the company expanded its Board of Directors with the addition of Simon Orange, the Founding Partner and Chairman of CorpAcq and Robert Post, President and CEO of Cloud5 Communications and executive chairman of The Knowland Group. The company's board now has seven members, with four serving independently on needed committees that are required for NASDAQ Stock Market listings.
Monaker Group believes it has positioned itself to capture business from the significantly larger and currently untouched main stream travel distributors while industry stalwarts such as Airbnb and HomeAway continue to focus on the direct to consumer channels still utilizing the "request accept" model.
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