What is your business?
The mission of Toploc is to help people reconnect with the outdoors and nature. We want to bring together vacation rentals and nature accommodations in one place. At Toploc we offer 2,700 vacation accommodations located at the sea, in the countryside and in the mountains with 14 types of accommodation: gites, bed and breakfasts, houses, cabins, yurts, tents, troglodytes etc.. We want to put human contact back at the heart of the holiday rental experience. Key boxes don't talk and unfortunately take away some of the human contact. At Toploc we want to put the meeting back at the heart of the travel experience by putting forward hosts who welcome travelers in person. We want to reduce the ever more expensive booking fees of the market leaders (Airbnb, Booking, Expedia). Count 10-20% on the traveler side and 10-20% on the host side. At Toploc we do not take any commission on bookings. We pay our Hosts with a fixed annual subscription, an economic model that we think is fairer.
What is the profile of your customers?
We refer today 2700 vacation rentals in more than 60 countries. 50% of the ads are in France and 50% in French-speaking countries like Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Morocco, Tunisia etc... We reference 14 types of accommodation. You will find cottages, chalets, guest rooms, houses, villas, as well as a large choice of unusual accommodation such as yurts, tents, teepees, troglodytes, tree houses etc. An important point is that our rentals are almost entirely located in the countryside, at the sea and in the mountains. We do not target the heart of the big cities.
How did you get the idea and when?
Clément and Guillaume have made a career in the digital industry (Clément at Fuga and I at eBay), and we decided to change our lives by buying the customer database of Location-Francophone. We want to continue the initiative started by Julien. We want to continue the initiative started by Julien, which is to connect Hosts and Travelers by using the power of classifieds. We have decided to develop Toploc in France. To make this natural positioning live, what could be better than to settle in Annecy? After meeting with the local entrepreneurship correspondents of the Grand Annecy and the French Tech, we set up the Toploc team at the Papeteries in January 2022.
What are the benefits for your customers?
Our positioning is based on the human aspect by privileging hosts who are prescribers of their region, in a natural setting. What does this mean? Our Toploc Hosts are for the most part hosts who receive travelers in person. They are owners of their accommodations and like to share the good addresses of their local cultural environment. For Travelers, this is an opportunity to ensure an authentic stay, based on meeting people and experience. As we like to say, "key boxes don't talk".
How much does it cost?
On the travelers' side we do not take any commission (0%), it is free. Of course, you will not find any online payment or contract issuance, only networking services. On the Host side, we have created two subscriptions with accessible rates (from 40€ HT/year), including synchronization with the calendars of other platforms (Airbnb, Abritel...). We think this model is more equitable.
Why a partnership with Swikly?
For us, the partnership with Swikly is really complementary to the functioning of our site since the money for the different transactions does not go through our site.
Thus, hosts who wish to securely request online deposits or sureties to validate a reservation can call upon a trusted partner and all this without the constraints they might have with a bank transfer or a check.
This partnership is really ideal for us and we are sure that it will appeal to our guests!
