Since it was created in 2014, Uniplaces has gone from having just its three founders, Mariano Kostelec, Ben Grech and Miguel Santo Amaro, to form a team with hundreds of employees of many different nationalities. A project that in 2015 managed to close led by Atomic and has been supported by Capital Bank and international investors such as the founders of Trivago, Henrique Castro, former chief operating officer of Yahoo, or Jason Goodman, founder and CEO of Albiol.
On their portal, students can choose between thousands of accommodations verified by the Uniplaces team and reserve your place of residence. Thus, during the past year the number of contracts generated through the platform increased by 85%, compared to 2016, which meant that the company reached, since its inception, the record figure of 100 million euros in profits for homeowners for rent.
To learn a little more about this company, its history, its model and its future plans, We have interviewed Mariano Kostelec, co-founder of Uniplaces.
You have taken the online apartment rental model to one extreme of segmentation: university students. How did the idea of creating Uniplaces come about?
The founders of the company met while studying in England and decided to start an innovative business that did not yet exist in Europe. For this we move to Portugal and that’s when the idea came about because we realized that both me (Argentine) and Ben (English) had a lot of difficulties finding a house. A problem from which the idea of creating a marketplace world to facilitate international mobility.
You have recently announced that the owners who put their rooms up for rent through your platform already add up to more than 100 million euros in profit. How has the evolution been since your launch?
Uniplaces has had exponential growth in the last two years, that is, since the . Thus, what was once a simple page that put owners in contact with students became a transactional platform that ensures rents for owners, while guaranteeing students both that the accommodation they reserve is verified and that the entire process is safe, easy and fast.
What has been the main obstacle you have had to face to grow?
There are very innovative countries in terms of student accommodation such as UK or Holland, where universities reserve places for their students. However, in countries like Spain this innovative concept has not yet caught on in our universities, despite the fact that it is a growing problem for their students.
On the other hand, the pressure of tourist rentals in cities such as Barcelonamakes it difficult to control prices and a greater penetration among the owners who see in the tourist industry a more interesting source of income without taking into account the costs involved and the consequent legal difficulties.
How does your business model work? How is Uniplaces monetized?
Uniplaces like marketplace is in charge of connecting students with owners. So the monetization is obtained through a small commission on the first rent to the student and a commission to the owner on the value of the contract.
What type of homes or rooms are the most common on your platform? What is the most common price range?
Having 20,000 rooms in Spain, we have a very different portfolio of accommodation. The most common are central rooms in 3- and 4-bedroom apartments. As for the price range, it depends on each city and location. For example, in cities like Barcelona or Madrid the rooms range from 400 to 500 euros and in others like Valencia, Seville and Salamanca they are between 250-350 euros per month.
How have you raised your marketing strategy? What type of actions have worked best for you and which ones worse?
being a marketplace, we have two clients: the student and the owner. The fact that they are two audiences, many times, diametrically opposed makes we may have to adapt the brand and tone differently depending on who we are targeting.
For students we have had a lot of influence on the online part, having a strategy of CRM and online positioning very good and for owners it has always worked more a offline mix of events and conventional advertising. However, the more senior public is increasingly in digital media and the “young” value being able to touch and value the brand on-site and not hide behind a web page.
Let’s do a bit of futurology: what headline about Uniplaces would you like to read a year from now on Marketing4eCommerce?
Without a doubt, the one we would most like to obtain and for which we work every day is: “Uniplaces helps one million students find accommodation around the world.”
And a little more complicated: How do you imagine the online rental sector will evolve between now and 2020? How will technologies, consumption habits, etc. change?
In 2020, we anticipate that Practically all apartment reservations will be made online, there will be no visits on-site, so that everything will be visited through virtual reality. In addition, there will be an increasing trend towards more flexible contracts and it is likely that there will be no guarantees or deposits due to the simplification of procedures between intermediaries.
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