Over the years running my luxury travel agency, one issue kept recurring: vacation home rentals.
After COVID, home rental requests exploded. Families wanted more space. Groups wanted homes where everyone could stay together. Travelers wanted something more personal and unique than a traditional hotel experience.
And honestly, I understood why.
The problem was that behind the scenes, vacation rentals were one of the most frustrating parts of the travel industry for travel advisors.
I can’t tell you how many times I spent hours researching properties for clients: comparing listings, checking reviews, verifying locations, and trying to determine whether a home was actually professionally managed or simply photographed well online. Many times, I found myself forced to use booking engines that either paid extremely low commissions or offered inventory I didn’t fully trust.
Even worse, the pricing on some of these platforms was so inflated that I couldn’t comfortably present it to a client knowing they could go on Airbnb and find the same property for thousands less.
Over time, I lost bookings because I couldn’t confidently secure the right property. I missed out on revenue and commissions. But more than anything, I hated the feeling of sending clients somewhere I couldn’t personally stand behind with confidence.
That’s where the idea for Travina came from.
I started speaking directly with professional property managers, the companies managing dozens, sometimes hundreds, of homes. What I found was surprising:
Many of them didn’t even realize there was an opportunity to work with travel advisors.
As we began having conversations, they quickly saw the advantage of advisor clients. Travelers booking through advisors tend to be more communicative, respectful, experience-focused, and relationship-driven. Property managers saw the value immediately. They were willing to pay commissions, and they wanted direct partnerships.
The issue wasn’t that the inventory didn’t exist.
The issue was that no one had built the connection between professional vacation rental properties and the travel advisor community in a meaningful way.
So my co-founder and I decided to build it ourselves.
Travina is not a booking engine or another middleman platform. It’s a platform designed to connect travel advisors directly with highly vetted vacation rental properties that actively work with advisors and pay commissions.
That means:
- No middleman
- No inflated pricing
- Direct communication
- Professionally managed and vetted homes
- Better experiences for both advisors and clients
On the technology side, my co-founder previously worked with Delta Air Lines on travel technology platforms and spent years working closely with travel advisors. She built the backend systems for Travina and integrated tools like Hospitable to help streamline onboarding and management for property owners.
Right now, we’re in the launch phase and actively onboarding both travel advisors and rental properties.
For property owners, the opportunity is significant. Having thousands of travel advisors who can discover and recommend your property opens the door to a completely different type of guest: travelers who value service, relationships, curated experiences, and quality over anonymous marketplace transactions.
And for advisors, it creates something our industry has needed for a long time: a better way to confidently book vacation rentals while still building a sustainable business.
We officially launched sign-ups this week, and it’s incredibly exciting to finally start seeing both advisors and properties come onboard.
If you’re a travel advisor looking for vetted vacation rentals that actually support the advisor community, or a property owner interested in connecting with advisors directly, we’d love to have you join us.
→ Learn more and sign up at travina.co