News

Navis of Bend helps keep resorts on track

Firm manages clients' ad revenue, phone calls

By Anna Sowa / The Bulletin

Published: September 19. 2006 5:00AM PST

When resort businesses say, "I know only 50 percent of my marketing is working, I just don't know which 50 percent," Kyle Buehner says his company has the answer.

"We give (businesses) the info to find which 50 percent is working," said Buehner, president of Bend-based Navis, a business that sells software to help vacation rental management companies book more reservations.

Navis is the new evolution of Buehner-Fry Inc., which Buehner's father, Milton, began in 1987 with Greg Fry. The business began making technology that controlled long-distance phone services in resort homes, then had to reinvent itself when the advent of cellular phones and calling cards rendered land-line services obsolete.

Now, Navis offers roughly six different products aimed at helping businesses in the hospitality industry get the most out of their existing resources, Buehner said.

To do this, Navis offers Navis Narrowcast, a software product that tracks 800 numbers called from advertisements. Additionally, Navis offers unlimited long-distance phone service for resort properties and it invented RezForce, which is a 24/7 call-center service that allows resort customers to make reservations around the clock.

Roughly half of Navis' 43 employees work at the call center, taking reservations and collecting data on callers, including where calls are coming from, whom the caller speaks to and how much money they end up spending - all valuable marketing information for resorts.

When a customer reads a resort's ad in a newspaper or magazine and calls the 800 number listed, Narrowcast tracks the call and includes the demographics of the caller. The ads that generate the most calls are deemed the most effective, allowing a resort to adjust its marketing strategies accordingly.

"So if a resort runs ... ads in Sunset magazine, we can help them find out how many people responded to the ad and track how many sales were made from that ad," Buehner said. "Before, they couldn't track it or see if they get their money's worth."

With approximately 850 clients scattered from Hawaii to Florida, Buehner says only 5 percent of his business is done in Central Oregon. Most of his clients come from Florida because the state has a high number of resorts per capita and attracts most of the East Coast vacationers and retirees.

In the High Desert, Navis has worked with Eagle Crest, Brasada Ranch, the Central Oregon Visitors Association and Mt. Bachelor Village, Buehner said.

How has Navis evolved over the years?

We began 19 years ago as a cottage industry that literally started in a one-bedroom cottage outside Sunriver.

My dad, Milton Buehner, started the business with Greg Fry (Milton is now CEO of the company).

I joined in 1988 and most of those years we were solving the basic problem of trying to control long-distance phone usage from private vacation homes and condos.

We had technology that would make sure you could pick up the phone and not leave the owner of the home or condo stuck with a phone bill - the bill would go to the user.

Eventually, we were providing similar technology for 75,000 homes and condos throughout the United States.

Things were going well until cell phones and discount calling cards came along. That, combined with Sept. 11, was almost the perfect storm for us. We had a near-death experience and had to completely reinvent ourselves with a new product line.

So we started creating new products, including a device that goes on a telephone jack and delivers the room temperatures to us, then displays it on the Web for the company. We also designed a housekeeping tracking system.

Then came RezForce: We realized we already had a 24/7 call center supporting the telephones, which became not so valuable with cell phones, and management companies needed someone to represent them after hours. So RezForce tied the two together and that became a success.

We also realized that our customers need to better track the effectiveness of their advertising. We knew how to run our switchboard, so we tied that to the Internet and created Navis Narrowcast.

How do you see the company growing in the future?

We are pursuing larger resort companies and resort hotel properties throughout the United States.

Is there anything else like Navis around?

There's really no one like us anyplace. We're sort of a duck-billed platypus.

We are a very unique industry and in many ways we see ourselves as an inch wide and a mile deep in the resort industry. We've grown up in it and have chosen to focus our efforts in it.