Change Take
There have been tons of layoffs in various areas of the short-term rental industry over the past year. Faced with headwinds, companies are cutting costs and trying to position themselves according to new market conditions.
Dennis Schaal
TravelNet Solutions laid off about 15 employees, roughly 7.5% of its 200-strong workforce, on Thursday, and the CEO said the decision was to reallocate resources towards engineering and its core asset management business.
TravelNet Solutions Track’s short-term rental property management system is considered a leading provider of services to major US companies in the sector. It services roughly 90,000 units, a former employee told Skift. It competes with solutions such as Escapia owned by Expedia Group and LiveRez by Inhabit.
In an interview Friday, CEO Ryan Bailey confirmed the total number of layoffs, but said the company is investing in hiring engineers so the net workforce reduction would ultimately be about 3%.
The layoffs followed in the revenue management and digital management services segment. The company is not eliminating software, but some of the staff that manage customer service.
TravelNet focuses on its core business
The layoffs came in the revenue management and digital management services segment, both the former employee and Bailey confirmed. So the company is not eliminating that software, but it has laid off some of the staff that managed those services for clients.
“It’s a game changer in how we shape TravelNet going forward,” Bailey said. “We’re taking those dollars and adding those dollars into more engineers so there will be three times as many engineers.”
The layoffs most affected former employees of two companies that TravelNet acquired in the past few years, namely Rented in 2022 for revenue management and Gueststream in 2020 for digital services, according to a former employee. The layoffs included several members of middle management.
Slack channel announcement
TravelNet notified employees on its Slack channel Thursday that a joint meeting would be held later in the day for all employees who did not have a meeting scheduled that morning to inform them that they would be laid off, the former employee said.
The former employee said the company said it wanted to remove the director layer to get closer to its customers. “I think it was mostly an excuse,” said the former employee.
The former employee said TravelNet traditionally pays employees bonuses and incentives on a quarterly basis, but not for the third quarter. However, the company paid one for the fourth quarter.
TravelNet seeks to invest in artificial intelligence
CEO Bailey said the layoffs are part of a process to bring in new product leadership to grow the business. Managed digital services and revenue management were low single-digit parts of the company’s total revenue, he said.
Bailey said TravelNet will invest in artificial intelligence to help customers become more efficient and do more with less.
The company wants to invest in “things that will take you into the future so that customers are ahead of their competition, he added.
A former employee and executive at a well-known asset management company claimed TravelNet clients who relied on the company to manage their revenue management programs were left undaunted on Thursday when managers got the axe.
“Companies that relied on a pool of professional services hired under a contract woke up today without a revenue manager,” said the asset management executive.
TravelNet’s Bailey disputed that idea, saying other employees are filling the void.