Managing director David Chambat, formerly of TVTrip, said Sri Lanka would go live next quarter, followed by a rollout to other Asian resort destinations.

“Sri Lanka is another destination where there are some beautiful houses for rent. Geographical expansion makes sense to replicate the model into other Asian resort destinations.”

Since its launch, the company has been 100% focused on setting up the right product for its customers, said Chambat.

“We’ve put in a lot of effort in getting the right villas into our site. We spent a lot of time touring Bali, meeting with villa owners and managers, discussing with tourists and customers, understanding the success factors of a villa, the expectations of the different nationalities coming into Bali.

“Australians are not looking for the same location as the Japanese, they want to be close to Kudeta while the Japanese love the greener Canggu area. Singaporeans want air-con in their bathrooms while French tourists want open air shoqeres. Theer is also growing demand from domestic travellers from Jakartathat represent up to 30% of the occupancy of some villas – and their expectations are unique as well.

“It’s also very much about setting up a website that’s above competition, in terms of design, functionalities – we are one of the few websites with an availability calendar for each and every villa, as well as more and more reviews from customers – and languages – we have translated the site into seven languages including Japanese, Korean and Indonesian.”

With the focus on content, Chambat said traffic has come up faster than expected. Demand is generated through three channels.

“First, search – with the recent Panda and Penguin updates of Google, priority has been given to sites like ours with fresh and original content, well organized, versus the myriad of spammy websites playing with the Bali keyword – and we have seen an obvious shift of traffic to www.villa-bali.com.

“CRM is another channel; we have close to 5,000 emails in Singapore already, That’s a big number considering that we are a niche business. We are also building up partnerships.”

During Chinese New Year, KLM launched a promotion, offering a $88 voucher on a villa rental to its Bali passengers.

Chambat said that traction has been high, both online and offline. “When we embarked on this adventure, the plan was to set up a pure online player. We realized quickly that there was a large offline market as well. We see customers walking in our office in Chinatown to make their bookings. We had to ban T-shirts in the office, lay a carpet on the floor and arrange flowers in the entrance.

“It is nice to see the real world mixing up with online, it gives us concrete customer feedback – and it is for sure a great loyalty path. Conversions arte picking up too; we started low when we didn’t have enough villas, customer reviews and availability information. We are seeing a more stable conversion rate now that we have the right product in place.”

Villa-bali.com is Act 1 of villa-finder.com. “We are convinced that in this all-online-and-virtual world, there, is space for an online player that’s also able to develop customer service excellence on the phone, email and face to face. Customers are also eager to try new destinations but they also feel there’s too much information online.

“So if we can help them figure out the pros and cons of a destination, and select great atypical accommodation for them, I am convinced we are on the right track.”