Hospitality & Tourism  March 20, 2017

Boulder vacation-rental company launches new technology for customers

BOULDER — InvitedHome, a vacation-home-rental company that specializes in luxury houses, developed a new platform to make it easier for homeowners to monitor the abodes they are renting out.

The Boulder company released HomeCraft, a dashboard that lets the owners of the vacation homes see when their home is being used, how much revenue they’re bringing in and when the house needs a capital improvement, among other features.

The decision to develop HomeCraft is to increase transparency among InvitedHome and the homeowners the company works with, said Wendy Purvey, chief marketing officer for InvitedHome.

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“The average sale prices of our homes is $2 million,” Purvey told BizWest in a phone interview. “We very much stay in that resort market. These are second homes where the owner may live in New York but have a home in Telluride and use it twice a year. We want to make sure it’s ready for them, it’s their home. We make sure the pillows are in the right place and it doesn’t look like people are in and out of their home. And we’re very much about transparency with them.”

The dashboard lets the company log everything that is happening with the property, and lets the homeowner forecast how much money they might make if they rent their home out at any given time — helping them to decide whether they want to use their house that weekend or rent it out.

In addition to the HomeCraft dashboard, Purvey said InvitedHome also offers a virtual binder for guests, which details every instruction they need to use the appliances on the property.

Purvey added that InvitedHome gets its revenue from getting a percent of what the guests pay to use the houses.

HomeCraft has been several years in the making.

“The HomeCraft concept has been in the works for many years,”  said Tom Feldhusen, chief product officer of InvitedHome, in an email to BizWest. “With over one million dollars in investment capital, we’ve brought it to life and created a huge point of differentiation in the vacation rental space.”

Looking ahead, Purvey said the company is focused on growing. In addition to destinations such as Vail, Breckenridge, Lake Tahoe and Maui, InvitedHome added Jackson Hole, Wyo., to its roster and is looking at adding Park City, Utah, next.

BOULDER — InvitedHome, a vacation-home-rental company that specializes in luxury houses, developed a new platform to make it easier for homeowners to monitor the abodes they are renting out.

The Boulder company released HomeCraft, a dashboard that lets the owners of the vacation homes see when their home is being used, how much revenue they’re bringing in and when the house needs a capital improvement, among other features.

The decision to develop HomeCraft is to increase transparency among InvitedHome and the homeowners the company works with, said Wendy Purvey, chief marketing officer for InvitedHome.

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