LUGGit Partners’ Interviews - Villa Victoria Barcelona

Villa Victoria Barcelona

🚀 We arrived in Barcelona! 🚀

LUGGit arrived in Barcelona four months ago, and we are delighted with the incredible welcome. In our first weeks in the Catalan capital, we talked with one of our first partners Villa Victoria Barcelona.

In this meeting, its manager Imanol Carbonell gave us feedback about our partnership, the beginnings of Villa Victoria Barcelona and its career in short-term rental, and summarised what are for him the challenges that the vacation rentals will face proximately.

LUGGit: How did Villa Victoria Barcelona start? Why did you decide to start in the Vacation Rental sector?

Imanol: Villa Victoria Barcelona story started around 2002. My family had the accommodation that gives the name to our company, a villa located 20 minutes walking from the building centre of Barcelona and 10 minutes walking from monuments like Sagrada Familia or Sant Pau hospital.

This type of accommodation was not so usual in the city, and we realised we had a unique value proposal: A quiet property with all the amenities for groups and families, but at the same time, close to the building centre of Barcelona.

We started this vacation rental adventure to make some profit from this accommodation and others we also had then. At first, we entrusted the management to a specialised external company, given that our knowledge at the beginning was limited. We were among the first to offer tourist accommodation in Barcelona.

Starting in 2012, we took over the management of our properties ourselves and have built a family team that I am so proud of.

We count on five accommodations in Barcelona

• Our jewel, Villa Victoria Barcelona, with a capacity for 16 people.
• Two apartments named Victoria Diagonal Mar, with a capacity for eight people each.
• And two other apartments named Victoria City Center, with a capacity for ten people each.

Away from Barcelona, we already manage Victoria Beach Salou, a house in this location.

L: Regarding the hard times we have all been through, have you experienced growth after the COVID-19 crisis? If so, how are you managing?

I: Although Barcelona took more time to recover than Madrid, we have experienced growth, and our expectations are optimistic for the future. If we put an eye on pre-pandemic numbers, we are overcoming them and getting historical records.

We are managing it in the only way we think we can achieve success: With teamwork. We have staff dedicated to each area, and this gives us specialisation when it comes to providing service to the guest.

L: Talking about providing service to the customers, what is the key to offering an excellent customer experience, and how important is guest satisfaction for Villa Victoria Barcelona?

I: For us, the key is to dedicate yourself professionally and to offer 24/7 customer support service.

Always being focused on guests' satisfaction is our number 1 priority. What has allowed us to improve our service until now has been the suggestions coming from our guests, and how we have been capable of adapting these to our accommodations.

L: From your point of view, how can the collaboration between Villa Victoria Barcelona & LUGGit improve your guests' experience? And how does it help you in your operations?

I: The partnership with LUGGit allows us to greatly improve our guests' experience, given that thanks to your luggage pick up, storage and delivery service, we are solving a problem that many clients have been asking us for more and more often: being able to enjoy their stay in Barcelona from the beginning to the end without having to carry their bags.

For us property managers, in addition to the great advantage mentioned above, you make life much easier at the operation level. We no longer have to think about where to store the luggage or set up a space. And most importantly, we can adjust our check-ins and check-outs to the time that best suits us without negatively affecting our travellers.

L: Besides LUGGit, what other tools do you use to optimise the management of your properties?

I: Among others, I would highlight two that also help us a lot:

• Our website, where guests can book directly with the best prices because of our booking engine.
• And our Channel Manager, that allows us to synchronise the availability and rates of all of our accommodations in the different OTAs we advertise, thus saving us a lot of time and, in turn, gaining peace of mind since we avoid problems such as overbookings.

L: What are your expectations for the future of the Vacation Rental sector, and how do you think it will evolve here in Barcelona specifically?

I: In general, I think the vacation rental sector has come out very strong after the pandemic. We have been able to endure such a difficult time as this, improving and optimising our processes, which now allows us to offer a better service.

Regarding Barcelona specifically, I am very optimistic. I recently read an article in The Telegraph in which Barcelona was ranked as the best city in the world. Therefore, the number of tourists visiting us each year is very high. In addition, the technological ecosystem related to the business travel ecosystem continues to grow. An example of this can be fairs and congresses such as the Mobile World Congress.

L: Finally, to end this extraordinary meeting, what do you think are going to be the main challenges that we are going to encounter?

I: I would like to be a magician and know them all, but unfortunately that is not the case. We will take them on as they come, just as we have in the past.

In any case, I do believe there will be one that will be very present in the coming years. That is none other than pollution and climate change.

The extent to which we can face this and make our cities and accommodations more sustainable places will mark a before and after. Therefore, we must focus on more "eco-friendly" types of customers, who will greatly value sustainable mobility, emissions control, energy saving, etc…