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The Expansion of Villa Finder – Our Story, Part III

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This is the last part 3 part series highlighting the very beginnings and subsequent evolution of Villa Finder. Follow us as we go behind the scenes and discover how this Singaporean startup grew from three young lads covering one destination to over 20 employees covering five, all in under three years. 

Part I: The Idea behind Villa Finder
Part II: Bootstrapping Villa Finder

From the very launch of Villa-Bali.com in August of 2012, the growth has been exponential. Sure, the founders knew they had an idea that answered a market demand, and sure, the early client reservations were an indication of potential success to come, but the initial trio of David, Daniel and Adrien couldn’t foresee just how successful they’d be in that first year. As the reservations came pouring in, the team quickly expanded and employees were hired from countries all around the world. They soon realized, however, that in order to provide the best service possible, they needed more than a bigger team – they needed people on the ground, in Bali.

There were only advantages and potential opportunities with this expansion – by opening an office in Indonesia, Villa-Bali.com would have a team of experts familiar with the landscape of Bali and capable of giving customers advice on a variety of different subjects. Furthermore, having a presence in the region meant that clients could always rely on staff in case of any emergencies. So, in November of 2013, the doors of the Bali office officially opened. To ensure that the new office was as efficient as possible, Maria, who had been working from Singapore at the time, moved to Bali and settled into her new role as Head of Operations. There, she began to oversee a team of 10+ Travel Consultants and Guest Relations Specialists.

Travel Consultants working in the Bali office

The job of a Travel Consultant (TC) is half of the dual driving force behind Villa-Bali.com’s organization – responsible for helping clients book their perfect villa, they have an in depth knowledge of every single property listed on the website and can advise international clients in a tailored way by catering to their individual preferences. Whether you’re looking for a beachfront villa or a house in the middle of ricefields, the TCs will send you a list of villas that suit your criteria. The Guest Relations Specialists (GR) are the other half of Villa-Bali.com’s customer service spectrum and have the important task of facilitating the trip once the customer has booked. In the weeks before the client is due to arrive, the GRs will send welcome emails, arrange airport transfers, and connect with the villa owners to arrange the different customer requests and ensure that everything is in order for their arrival. The symbiotic relationship between the TCs and GRs is what makes the booking process and the arrival into a Bali villa so easy and worry-free.

With the manpower trained and the Bali office open and running, the booking process became fully optimized and requests were outnumbering themselves every month. Soon, due to an overwhelming amount of satisfied customers asking if they had villas in other destinations, and knowing that the company’s business model had proven to be a success, the trio looked into expanding their brand and opening villa rental sites in other countries. By doing their research and venturing into neighboring countries, the team was soon able to identify an ideal location for its next rental destination: Sri Lanka. By February of 2014, the site for SriLanka-Villa.com was launched, thus extending the company’s reach in South and Southeast Asia. By April of the same year, two more sites focused on Thailand had been inaugurated, with locations in Koh Samui and Phuket. These three new locations offered exactly the same services as Villa-Bali.com, except replicated into new locations and therefore catering to an even larger clientele. With a portfolio now nearing a thousand villas in four destinations, Villa-Bali.com has experienced exponential growth both in its physical presence and per booking requests.

In order to better manage the new destinations as well as the increased traffic, the team decided to create a corporate brand named Villa-Finder.com. This brand would regroup several websites – 5 destination sites (Bali, Seminyak, Sri Lanka, Koh Samui, and Phuket), and 4 originally-created, technologically-innovative sites geared towards optimizing the customer experience on the various websites. inter-villa, a B2B platform for villa owners would provide correct and updated availability information, while Fox, a client dashboard, would allow the Travel Consultants and Guest Relations Specialists to manage inquiries and reservations for booking villas. In addition, ImagX, an image database, would allow the team to assure the continued and accurate performance of the thousands of images displayed on every website, whereas Ingwa would serve as the translation platform for each external web project, enabling organized content translations for up to a dozen languages. Villa-Finder.com was the ideal and indeed, the only, solution to housing all of these sites under one umbrella, and creating a well-rounded, powerhouse brand in the process.

These developments are purely thanks to the talents of CTO and resident computer genius, Adrien. A brilliant student with extensive experience in his field, he is responsible for the optimization and oversight of Villa-Finder.com’s websites. A perfectionist, he has carefully pondered the position of every button and landing page detail to cater to the needs of his consumers. “The goal is simple – to provide every person who goes on our website with the best experience possible.” Adrien explains, “Our ambition is both to make people dream but also to anticipate their expectations. The site needs to take the needs of the consumer into consideration so that when clients come on the site for the first time, they know exactly what to do, and they feel comfortable on each and every one of our pages even though they’ve never been on our website before.” Juggling multiple sites over the past three years has been no easy task, but one that he has managed with complete dedication and expertise. “We place a great deal of importance on website efficiency – by anticipating the needs of individual consumers before they even ask, our site is able to deliver answers rapidly and adeptly.”

Super serious Marketing strategist

From the time of the very first website launch, marketing master, Daniel, has taken charge of the content creation and integration to ensure that each villa possessed in-depth, original descriptions, high quality photos, and accurate rates. This marketing strategy is based on the following philosophy – “what will be good for the user will be good for Google. Essentially, Google wants what the user wants: exhaustive, clear and good looking information,” Daniel says. “This guarantees two things – the on-site experience for the client is easy and enjoyable, and the sites rank high when you search online for villas in ‘X’ destination”. Thanks to the combined hard work of the many employees of Villa-Finder.com, the company has established a comprehensive system that works, both for customers and employees.

Today, the growth is far from over; the team remains as ambitious as ever, always looking for the next project, the next idea, the next expansion. This clarity of vision has enabled them to maintain a level of objective distance critical to running a successful business. When questioned about the future of the company, David assures us that the possibilities are endless, the room for growth is boundless, and that he has no doubt Villa-Bali.com and its offshoots will continue to succeed in the area of villa rentals, thanks in no small part to the team’s core values – individually inspected and carefully selected villas, best price guarantees, and a stellar customer service.

This article was written by Cezanne Rothberg and Serena Lignel

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