We’re proud of our integration with leading property management systems. Our partners use the PointCentral offering to provide a fully integrated solution powering an integrated smart home experience.
This month we caught up with Shelley Warsaw, Partner Relations Manager at TRACK to find out more about how TRACK is using technology to transform the way hospitality and property management work.
Please introduce yourself and your role at TRACK.
I’m Shelley Warsaw, Partner Relations Manager at TRACK. I’ve worked in the hospitality industry for over 20 years, with extensive experience in sales and marketing, as well as revenue management and distribution. As Partner Relations Manager, I’m responsible for ensuring our partners and customers are getting the most out of their integration with TRACK. This is a new role within TravelNet Solutions – in recognition of the vital role that partnership integration plays for our customers, our partners and, consequently, our business.
Tell us a bit more about TRACK’s all-in-one short-term rental property management solution.
TRACK is the vacation rental industry’s fastest growing operating platform used by property managers to improve back and front office operations. Our platform consists of three modules – the award winning PMS, Advanced CRM for email/SMS automation, and Pulse contact center software for reservation teams.
While we continuously add new functionality to our platform, we also enable other technology companies to integrate with us via our open API. We strongly believe in giving property managers the flexibility to choose the tech stack strategy that serves them best – either with an all-in-one solution or a best-of-breed solution. We view building and maintaining a robust, integration partner ecosystem vital to our entire industry’s long term success.
How are you helping property managers run their businesses more efficiently?
TRACK helps property managers run their businesses more efficiently in two distinct ways. First, our modern technology is easy to adopt – it’s fully configurable and conforms to the unique ways each property manager operates their business. And second, TRACK typically saves thousands of labor hours each year by automating many of the day to day, manual tasks so common in our industry. With more than 1.2 million trigger/action automations, TRACK improves short-term profitability while helping scale business growth beyond artificial limits previously imposed by less functional software.
Your mission is to transform how hospitality works – with a focus on efficiency. And you’re using technology to do this. How is technology shaping the nature of property management in 2022 and beyond?
Technology has proven time and again that it plays a significantly important role in determining the level of success property managers achieve. In any industry, having the right business tools is like giving your staff productivity superpowers. In our industry – faced with slim margins and labor challenges – having a strong tech stack couldn’t be more important in transforming how hospitality works.
Our industry is growing fast, attracting lots of new investment, competitors and guests. It seems everyone wants a piece of our pie, and as a result, expectations are skyrocketing. Property managers have to stay on top of their game – meeting ever increasing guest expectations, combating new and well-funded competition (no longer just the real estate company down the road!), and fighting hard to woo new owners to join their program. We can’t overstate how important modern technology is to the health and success of property management businesses.
We’ve seen a huge uptick in tech developments in the short-term rental industry in recent months. How do you ensure you’re at the forefront of technology innovations in this space?
Yes we have! It’s exciting to see our industry growing so fast and becoming more sophisticated and tech-enabled. With such high growth, property manager needs are constantly evolving. We stay out front by being grounded in our customer’s business and rolling up our sleeves regularly to understand their most difficult day to day operational challenges.
Our ‘outside in’ approach to product development means we’re always watching and listening for ways to improve the solutions we build. In addition to market and user research, we rely on our TRACK Customer Advisory Board. Our Board meets a couple of times each year and is made up of experienced property managers of all sizes. They provide us with valuable product roadmap feedback and help identify new challenges worth solving.
And, of course, all of this wouldn’t be possible without a very talented team. We’ve invested many millions of dollars in the last 3 years in hiring really smart and capable people in engineering, product management, professional services, and customer success.
We’re proud to have you on board as a trusted partner. What excites you most about our integration?
Thanks, we’re excited about our PointCentral integration because home automation and the experiential improvement it brings to our industry is just essential. As we’ve all learned in these pandemic times, touchless experiences and learning to serve guests in this new normal is now expected, and without solutions like yours, our industry’s growth among the traveling public may not have been as strong the last two years.
How are your customers using PointCentral products and services in order to be more operationally efficient?
One of the biggest ways our mutual customers take advantage of TRACK’s integration with PointCentral is through our Triggers and Automations engine. For example, property managers can automate generating and delivering door access codes to guests, and automate thermostat setting changes based on occupancy. The ability within TRACK to set up automations is based on both time-based and event-based triggers, giving property managers ways to get creative in how they leverage the power of our softwares working together.
2021 was a year of both challenge and opportunity for the hospitality industry. What has been your biggest challenge in recent months? Any learning you’d like to share?
With the success of our TRACK PMS, our biggest challenge has been our growth. We’ve had to expand our team bigtime – particularly in engineering and in professional services (the team responsible for onboarding new customers). Our company has invested several million dollars more in incremental payroll to hire some really great, smart people.
It’s really fun and exciting to work for a high growth company. I think the key to continued success is always listening to your customers, understanding their most important business problems to solve and not being afraid to roll up your sleeves while building really great, really innovative solutions.
And finally, what does 2022 have in store for TRACK?
We’re focused on transforming the way hospitality works! We’ll continue developing innovative product enhancements that improve our customers’ work lives, expanding our ecosystem of great technology partners to better serve property managers, and building the infrastructure necessary to facilitate more than 100 million guest stays by 2026.
