Interview with Xavier, CEO of Icnea

It was a long time that we wanted to do this interview with you and finally, here we are.

Xavier Marin, CEO of Icnea, the software house selling one of the PMS Channel Manager that mostly penetrated the Spanish market, is one of those people that transmits calm because you perceive right away he knows what he is doing, that he knows the vacation rental field as the palm of his hand thanks to his yearly experience and because he drives his business with passion, using all of his 5 senses, to see his product express its full potential without forgetting to continuously adapt it to the new needs.

With the excuse of the end of the integration process with our company, Doinn, I was able to steal some time from his thick agenda and have him tell us how the idea to create a PMS Channel Manager was born and what is his vision concerning the current situation vacation rental is found.

Xavier, thank you very much for your time, it is an honor for me to interview a point of reference of the vacation rental field such as you are.

It is me who thank you for your kindness and for this opportunity to spread the word further over who we are.

I will use a guideline for this interview, I will use the Golden Circle of Simon Sinek and his 3 key questions: what is Icnea, how does Icnea work and, finally, the most important question: why Icnea. I mean, why do property managers still work with you after such a long time, what is the added value you propose?

Icnea comes from a family project, born in Figueres, in the north of Catalunya, with a particular interest in the tourism field since the beginning, in 1961, and in computer science, since 1978. The most important project developed is the managing software used during the olympic games in Barcelona in 1992. Next, in 2001, we gave birth to Icnea, with the objective to specialize in e-commerce while keeping a particular attention to the tourism field.

Since the beginning we have bet on creating an application that allowed users to manage reservations easily, intuitively and that resolved all those needs professional vacation rental property managers may ever have. Also, we aimed to grow through integrations with other operators, that is why we integrated a Channel Manager along with a whole series of other integrations with all sorts of businesses such as the ones specialized in smart locks, pricing systems, passport reading systems, sound control systems, credit card payment gateways and services companies like Doinn, like you. We strongly believe that thanks to these synergies we can raise the competitiveness of our clients, which is our main objective.

However, it is important to highlight that our solutions do not incorporate only all of our knowledge in the field but also the one of our clients. Every year we organize various events, with our own clients, in various cities to present the latest technical and service updates but mostly to discuss all together what are the most important solutions that have to be added to our product to grow. These meetings are an incredible opportunity also because it allows us to discuss where the market is going and therefore try to anticipate, all together always, the new upcoming needs. It may be for this reason, because clients feel we are so close to them and so receptive to their needs, they see how we implement their requests and how we listen to their needs during the year, maybe this is the reason why we differentiate so much in such a standardized market.

Since the beginning of the pandemia, while reorganizing ourselves in order to allow our employees to smartwork, I asked my employees to make an extra effort mainly focused in pampering our clients in every way possible to help them get through such a hard moment. To help them synchronize with as many channels as possible and to automatize all processes as possible.

In addition we organized various webinars over various subjects which had a fantastic response from the public. Our webinars did not only talk about ourselves, or our products, but also treated other subjects such as how to face the new working methodologies imposed by the pandemia. Among these, for example, we also made a seminar about the new hygiene dispositions with yourselves, Doinn, and also in this case the response was great from all participants.

Furthermore we developed new APPs to make online check-in easier and reduce interpersonal contact to the minimum. We also developed a credit card recurring payment system to simplify administrative tasks.

Our priority was to organize ourselves focusing on 2 objectives: how to help our clients to receive more reservations and how to reduce reservation management operational costs. It comes natural to realize how both these objectives have a common denominator: maximize the rentability of our clients.

Thank you for sharing this vision with us Xavier. Despite the difficulty in believing this we are going to get through this, and we are going to do so coming back stronger than before.

With this new integration all property managers we have in common will be able to create a profile for all of their managed properties while synchronizing calendars to automatize all cleanings, laundry, bed sheet rental and check-in in just 2 clicks.

I remind you that our services are certified and that we are present in over 300 cities so that anyone can manage their property remotely while exploiting any opportunity that may arise along the way.

After completing registration with Doinn, click on “integrate PMS”

Steps to follow in Icnea

Starting from now Doinn will receive all tasks associated with Icnea, the integration is active and ready!

Properties and services will be synchronized automatically. From now on property managers will see their properties ready for guests in just one click! If the property manager wishes to automatize the integration entirely all they need to do is contact us at integrations@doinn.co