How Homerti manages 1,000+ properties across 3 Spanish markets with Rentals United
Homerti is a Mallorca-based property rental business that prioritizes service quality, client retention, and operational efficiency
| No. Properties Connected | 1000 |
| Headquarter Location | Mallorca |
| Tech Used | Custom API |
| Website | Visit Now |
The Challenges
Sync failures with real consequences.
30-day activation delays on Booking.com.
Review management at scale was unworkable.
The Solutions
Outcome
1 Day
Property activation on Booking.com1000+
Properties3
Spanish markets9
Connected channel
What we didn’t have was access to certain channels - channels that require 10,000 properties to get a direct integration. We only had 1,000. Rentals United gave us access we couldn’t get on our own.
The Homerti Story
Homerti has been managing holiday rental properties in Mallorca since around 2012. Over more than a decade, the business has grown into one of the region’s established operators, running close to 1,000 units across three Spanish markets: Mallorca, Costa Blanca, and Cádiz.
What makes Homerti unusual is the depth of its in-house technology. With a team of four to five internal developers, the company built its own Property Management System, its own invoicing engine, and its own booking flows. By 2020, the infrastructure was solid. What was missing was distribution, specifically, access to the channels that matter, at a cost that made operational sense.
The Challenge
Homerti’s previous channel manager was a poor fit in every dimension. It charged for a full technology stack: booking engine, invoicing, tax declarations, that Homerti had already built in-house. They were subsidising tools they never touched, while the core function they needed, reliable channel synchronisation, was failing.
- Sync failures with real consequences: Sync errors pushed wrong prices to live listings, created bookings for already-occupied dates, and triggered forced accepts under threat of penalty from major OTAs.
- Paying for tools they never used: Homerti was being billed for a booking engine, invoicing module, and tax reporting features it had no use for all built in-house already.
- Channel access blocked by scale thresholds: Many booking platforms require a minimum of 10,000+ properties before granting a direct API integration. At 1,000 units, Homerti could not negotiate access to these channels independently.
- 30-day activation delays on Booking.com: Activating properties on Booking.com required sending a manual Excel file and waiting up to 30 days for confirmation, an unacceptable bottleneck at scale.
- Review management at scale was unworkable: With 1,000+ properties, managing reviews property-by-property in the Booking.com extranet was practically impossible. Entire seasons of reviews went unanswered.
The Solution
In April 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Homerti made a decision that would simplify their business for good. They moved fully to Rentals United, not for a full technology platform, but for exactly what they needed: pure, reliable channel connectivity and nothing else.
- Pure channel connectivity: Homerti pays for one thing: reliable synchronisation and access to channels it cannot reach directly. No billing engine, no booking widget, no excess tooling.
- Access to channels beyond their reach: Channels that require 10,000+ properties for a direct API agreement become accessible through Rentals United’s existing integrations, including niche performers Homerti had never considered.
- Rock-solid reservation synchronisation: Prices, availability, and reservation data now flow correctly across all connected channels, eliminating the forced-accept and double-booking risk that characterised the previous setup.
- Booking.com activation: 30 days to next day: Property activation on Booking.com dropped from 30 days to next-day. Maria can now set markup directly in the Rentals United platform and have properties live within hours, no support ticket required.
- Centralised review management: All reviews across 1,000+ properties are consolidated in a single dashboard with date filtering, allowing the team to clear an entire season’s backlog in one systematic pass.
- Responsive, same-day support: Tickets acknowledged and escalated the same day, a critical capability for a business where a sync error at peak season is a direct revenue event.
“What we didn’t have was access to certain channels – channels that require 10,000 properties to get a direct integration. We only had 1,000. Rentals United gave us access we couldn’t get on our own.”
— Maria, Homerti
The Results
Five years on from their 2020 consolidation, Homerti’s distribution stack is stable, efficient, and growing in the right direction. The operational gains are concrete.
- Next-day property activation on Booking.com: Booking.com property activation that previously took 30 days now takes a single day, or less. At 1,000 properties, that is a significant operational gain.
- One channel manager, one cost, no workarounds: A single channel manager, correctly configured, has replaced a fragmented setup with sync errors, double costs, and forced accepts.
- Stronger pitch to property owners: By distributing across a wider portfolio of channels, Homerti can offer property owners a diversification story that smaller competitors cannot match.
- Unexpected revenue from niche channels: By connecting to Hostelworld, a channel discovered through the Rentals United channel list, Homerti found a new booking source for its hostels and hotel in Calador that it would not have identified alone.
- Reputation management made viable at scale: With a consolidated review dashboard, the team can now manage reputation systematically across all properties rather than property-by-property in the Booking.com extranet.
The channel diversification advantage
One of the clearest competitive advantages Homerti has gained through Rentals United is its ability to pitch channel breadth to new property owners. Smaller agencies in Mallorca distribute on Booking.com, Airbnb, and VRBO, and that is it. Homerti can go wider.
The business case is both a revenue argument and a risk argument. A property owner whose revenue depends entirely on three channels is exposed to the performance of each. Diversification across a broader channel portfolio means more stable income, a message that resonates strongly during owner acquisition conversations.
“If you sell everything through Booking, Airbnb, and VRBO, and one of them starts going badly, you can’t have all your eggs in one basket.”
— Maria, Homerti
The discovery of Hostelworld illustrates the point. Homerti found it listed in the Rentals United channel portfolio, connected it on the basis that they operate two hostels and a one-star hotel in Calador, and it now drives real bookings. That is what a 90+ channel portfolio unlocks: revenue from sources a property manager would not have found or prioritised independently.