The CEO of PackLate, Steve Barsh, has owned vacation rental property in Park City, Utah for over 10 years. In 2004 Steve started publicly disclosing progressively discounted prices as the check in date approached. As the risk of a night going unsold increased, Steve would continually lower the price under the simple theory that as price decreases, demand should increase. Year after year, Steve personally achieved revenues and nights booked higher than anyone else in his building using this simple method.
With the global recession in full force in 2009, it seemed the perfect time to take Steve’s idea to a whole new level — building an exciting vacation rental marketplace where prices change as the check-in date nears. Property managers and owners were sitting on an ever increasing amount of inventory (more second home owners were putting their vacation homes into rental pools to generate more income for themselves), at the same time demand was down dramatically, and nearly every traveler was looking for a deal and booking much closer to their check in date. In late 2009 the PackLate.com founding team came together and started developing the business strategy, de-risking the core assumptions, building the marketplace software, partnering with property managers, and raising a round of seed venture capital funding. Five months later, in January 2010, PackLate launched with inventory in its first geography, the US Rockies.
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