RentalsCombined Integrates Live Travel Agents With Property Listings
Skift Take
The idea of integrating service-fee loving travel agents into traveler apps is at least 15 years old, if not older. Still, assuming it solves a real problem for do-it-yourself travel bookers or a hefty segment of them, there is lots of room for improvement and innovation.
Kayak co-founder Paul English's new mobile-travel startup Lola wants to integrate live travel agents into an iPhone trip-planning and booking app but another travel startup, RentalsCombined.net already brings travel agents to the fore within desktop and mobile-Web experiences.
The concept isn't new. In fact, a now-defunct travel startup that had Regis Philbin as its celebrity spokesman and was aptly named ByeByeNow.com, likewise enabled travel agents to take control of travelers' desktops to make recommendations as far back as 2000.
Several-month-old RentalsCombined.net, based in London, says it offers 600,000 professionally managed apartments and villas for short-term rentals through travel agents.
Travel agents who download the RentalsCombined.net desktop app on its website or through the Sabre distribution system can utilize a "show me" feature, which enables them to push property recommendations, including photo slideshows, location, amenities, ra
