Press Kit

Searching for Vacation Rentals

The founders of Otalo found themselves and their friends spending way too much time searching for vacation rentals. Finding all the sites that list vacation homes; entering and re-entering their vacation information into each site; flipping back and forth between sites comparing homes, nowhere to save all their favorites. They were surprised that there wasn't a search site, like a Google but for vacation homes. So, they decided to build one. And Otalo.com was born.

Otalo is a next-generation search engine for vacation rentals - www.otalo.com - that searches across the internet's many different vacation rentals sites, giving people access to over 1.6 million worldwide vacation rental listings with a single powerful search.

Saving Time Planning a Vacation

Search the web for your vacation rental in a single click! Otalo eliminates the cumbersome process of finding multiple vacation home rental sites and continually re-entering vacation information. The next-generation search engine combines a Google-like ability to search many different vacation rental sites with a simple, photo-filled website to help vacationers find the perfect spot. Just enter your vacation rental needs once, and let Otalo search all the different rental sites for you, sifting through over 1.6 million rental listings world-wide.

Each vacation home is displayed with photos, descriptions, amenities, costs, and availability. Otalo also provides a central planning space for each user where they can save their favorite vacation homes and share them with friends and fellow travelers. Otalo's easy to use website allows you to search directly for a vacation home using a specific location and vacation rental attributes - like cost, availability, # of bedrooms and baths, and amenities. If you're not sure of where you want to go, you can also browse the millions of vacation home photos from around the world, looking at all the beautiful homes in exciting places. Just like any search engine, you can then click through to the source vacation rental site to make reservations and gather more information. Searching for homes on Otalo is free of charge.

Direct Leads for Vacation Rental Websites

Otalo's goal is to extend the marketing reach of the vacation rental sites by delivering highly qualified vacation renters directly to source websites for bookings and information. Otalo displays all properties fairly (as any search engine should) and the users then click-through to the source site (like Google, but for vacation rentals). Otalo does not take direct listings or bookings, and refers property owners and renters to source sites to list their vacation rentals. There are no charges or fees to vacation rental websites to be included in the Otalo search index.

About Otalo

Otalo was built by Mike Giles and Baer Tierkel, veteran software industry entrepreneurs who found themselves and their friends discouraged by the vacation rental process. So they built a search engine. The name Otalo (ō Â· tal Â· ō) was derived after deep and long market research (ie. gabbing with the regulars of the local cafe) by combining the Zen symbol enzo - "O" - with the Finnish word for house - "talo". The founders (after too many cups of tea) figured to bring a Zen calmness to looking for a Finnish rental house. Well, any rental house. It was *so* obvious. Well, you get the idea.

Otalo is a next-generation search engine for vacation rentals - www.otalo.com - that searches across the internet's many different vacation rentals sites in a single click, giving people access to over 1.6 million worldwide vacation rental listings with a single powerful search.

Otalo eliminates the cumbersome process of browsing multiple vacation home rental sites and continually re-entering vacation information. The next-generation search engine combines a Google-like ability to search many different vacation rental sites with a simple, photo-filled website to help vacationers find the perfect spot. You can save your favorites from all the different websites in one place and share them with friends and family.

Otalo is a search engine for vacation rentals - www.otalo.com - that searches across the internet's many different vacation rentals sites in a single click, giving people access to over 1.6 million worldwide vacation rental listings with a single powerful search with the ability to save favorites and share them with friends & family.

Otalo is a search engine for vacation rentals. You enter your search criteria (just like Google) and Otalo searches across the internet's many different vacation rentals sites and returns a list of vacation rentals that match the criteria you entered. If you like any of them you can save them to your favorites. Once you're ready to make a reservation or get more detailed information, you just click and you'll be on the source website where you can make your reservation.

You can search by # of bedrooms & bathrooms, cost, availability, and amenities - like pool, smoking, etc. You can sort the results by price or location or # of bedrooms. You can save any properties to your favorites. You can share your favorites (or any vacation rental) with friends & family via email or facebook or twitter or any of the social websites.

Just like other search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, LookSmart, etc.) Otalo uses a crawler constantly searching the web for vacation rentals.

Otalo is free of charge to folks searching for vacation rentals. Otalo does not take any direct listings - we are only a search engine searching existing data on the internet. Otalo refers any property owners who would like to be listed on Otalo to the source sites that are in the Otalo index. It's free of charge for any property we find to be included in the Otalo search index. Otalo displays all properties fairly (as any search engine should). Otalo does not take any bookings - users click through to the source websites (like any search engine) to get detailed information and do any transactions.

Otalo is supported by online advertising. So feel free to click on those ads that are interesting to you!

The name Otalo (ō Â· tal Â· ō) was derived after deep and long market research (ie. gabbing with the regulars of the local cafe) by combining the Zen symbol enzo - "O" - with the Finnish word for house - "talo". The founders (after too many cups of tea) figured to bring a Zen calmness to looking for a Finnish rental house. Well, any rental house. It was *so* obvious. Well, you get the idea.

Otalo is built on a whole slew of open source technology. We start by gathering pages with an industrial strength crawler, augmented to handle sitemaps and JavaScript. We then pull out data from those pages with a standards-based set of rules and structured queries. From there, we build our index and also start processing the millions of images to make them look just right. We even add some secret sauce to find the tens of thousands of duplicate listings, normalize the data and do all sorts of grungy things.

All of our data processing is done in the "cloud" with on-demand servers and the front-end is no different. The web site is standards-based HTML/CSS with a bit of AJAX mixed in and use of some YUI elements. That is backed by Java/JSP and a MySQL database. The cloud-based servers for the site are designed to dynamically adjust to spikes in load and "self-heal" in the event of a server crash.

All of that, just to make it simple and fun to find the perfect vacation spot.

Michael Giles is a co-founder of Otalo, and also serves as an advisor to several startups. Previously, he founded Furl.net which he sold to LookSmart in 2004. Furl co-created and continues to be a leader in the social bookmarking market, enabling users to save, share and recall anything they find online. Prior to founding Furl, Michael held various management and technical leadership positions at Vitria Technology, helping to grow the business from early start-up to multibillion-dollar public company. Prior to Vitria he co-founded a company focused on enterprise marketing automation and developed early content management software at Illustra/Informix. Michael received a BA in Physics from Oberlin College and loves to get dirty while helping his wife Michelle make awesome pottery.

Baer Tierkel is a co-founder of Otalo. When he is not writing code, he spends his time advising startups and trying to keep up with his kids and wife, Alison. Baer has focused over 25 years in the enterprise software industry, driving significant growth for such companies as PeopleSoft, McCormack & Dodge, Allegro Technology (founder), and Management Strategies, Inc. Baer's experience in the industry has spanned the roles of company founder, corporate strategy, brand and product marketing, product development, support and software engineering. Products designed by Baer are in use by millions of people worldwide. His tenure at PeopleSoft helped drive the company's growth from start-up to $2.1 billion in revenue, most recently as Executive Vice President for Worldwide Marketing. Baer enjoys sharing his expertise via speaking engagements with many organizations and events including Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Harvard Business School, and Comdex in addition to a number of start-up board and advisory positions he holds and has held in the industry and at non-profit organizations.

Big props to Rao's Cafe, aka Otalo World Headquarters, in the wooly town of Amherst in the hills of western Massachusetts. Much code was slung at Rao's, and many designs consulted on by the general ragtag caffeine-junkies that we call our friends.

Otalo Expands to 1.6 Million Vacation Rentals in 164 Countries

Vacation rental search engine adds new partners including airbnb, TripAdvisor, Flipkey, and Holiday-Rentals.co.uk

Amherst, Massachusetts. 4 February, 2012 -- Otalo has expanded its vacation rental search index to include over 1.6 million vacation home rental listings in 164 countries. Otalo also announced the addition of partners such as airbnb.com, TripAdvisor.com, Flipkey.com, Holiday-Rentals.co.uk, iStopOver.com, HomeGetaways.com, Niumba.com, RedAwning.com, SkipJump.com, and PerfectFloridaVillas.com.

"No one likes to show up on vacation and see a bunch of rental houses that you wish you had rented but never saw online," said Baer Tierkel, one of Otalo's founders. "The key to finding the perfect vacation rental is being able to see all of your options in a single click."

1.6 Million Vacation Rentals

Otalo's websiteenables travelers to use a single search for their vacation house preferences and immediately search over 1.6 million rental listings from the many different rental websites on the web. There is no need to wade through hundreds of different websites trying to find a great vacation rental. Travelers can search using their computer, iPad, or smartphone. Otalo also gives travelers a central place to save their favorites as well as share the homes they've found with their family and friends, making the vacation planning process much easier. Otalo has been called the "Kayak of vacation rentals".

"Looking for a vacation rental at the beach in the cold of February should be fun and not tedious," said co-founder Mike Giles, "It's actually a lot of fun to browse through all the great photos of cool homes in faraway, warm places." As the world-wide economy continues to be tough on vacationers, rentals serve as a great alternative to more costly hotels and resorts.

Otalo's crawlers search the web constantly, looking for vacation rentals to include in their index. The search index currently contains 1,615,253 listings that represent 735,728 vacation rentals; 79,003 homes with swimming pools; 37,750 waterfront houses and condos; 367,766 rentals that are smoking-free; 51,170 rentals that allow smoking; 353,637 rentals that are pet-free; and 149,934 that are pet friendly vacation rentals. can be found at:

The Otalo search index contains rentals in 164 countries. Europe leads the world with 392,456 vacation rentals; North America has 260,000; the South Pacific has 22,704; the Caribbean has 19,548; South America has 17,888; Africa has 7,818; Asia has 5,072; Central America has 4,873; Southeast Asia has 3,737; and the Middle East has the fewest with 1,632. The United States is the most popular country with 237,991 vacation rentals, and Spain is next with 107,661. The U.S.'s most popular destination is Kissimmee, Florida, near Orlando, with 4,097 rentals. Spain's most popular destination is Barcelona with 4,834 rentals.

The most expensive vacation rental that Otalo has found on the web is Necker Island, which only costs $273,000/week for a holiday. Accessible only by helicopter, it sleeps 28 in a Great House and multiple guest villas on the island with a number of pools, a beach house, and Crocodile Pavilion. Close behind in cost is Musha Cay which only costs $263,000/week, but there is room for 24 friends & family to play on the 7 beaches on this 150 acre private island.

New Partners

With the addition of properties from airbnb.com, TripAdvisor.com, FlipKey.com, Holiday-Rentals.co.uk, iStopOver.com, HomeGetaways.com, Niumba.com, RedAwning.com, SkipJump.com, and Perfect ForidaVillas.com, Otalo is helping more and more vacatino rental websites by delivering highly qualified vacation renters directly to their websites for bookings and information. Otalo has been described as "the Kayak of vacation rentals", due to their model of providing a single point of search for travelers, while sending traffic to the source sites.

About Otalo

Otalo was founded by Baer Tierkel and Mike Giles, veteran software industry entrepreneurs who enjoy to travel - but prefer to stay in other peoples' homes rather than hotels. Otalo is a search engine built specifically for travelers looking for the perfect vacation rental by enabling the traveler to search 1.6 million vacation rental listings in a single click.

More Information

For additional information about the next-generation Otalo search engine for vacation rentals, you can contact Baer Tierkel at +1 413 658 8133 or visit Otalo on the web at:

• Otalo - www.otalo.com
• About Otalo - www.otalo.com/about
• The Otalo Blog - www.otalo.com/blog
• Follow Otalo on Twitter - www.twitter.com/otalo
• 'Like' Otalo on facebook - facebook.com/vacationrentalsearch

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Otalo Releases Vacation Rental Search Portal for Dog Owners

Search over 150,000 dog friendly vacation rentals in 130+ countries.

Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. 15 October, 2011 -- Otalo has just released its vacation rental search portal focused on finding dog-friendly vacation houses. The portal lets people use a single search to find over 150,000 dog friendly vacation rentals from all across the web, giving them a free and easy to use tool to find the perfect house or condo for their vacation. The new portal lists dog-friendly vacation rentals in over 130 countries from Andorra to Zambia, and of course all of the United States.

Take The Whole Family on Vacation, Including the Dogs

"Many people have a hard time finding vacation rentals that cater to pet-owners," said Baer Tierkel, one of Otalo's founders, "Now travelers can bring the whole family on vacation, including dogs, because they can find a vacation rental for the whole family!"

The new portal was built by Otalo specifically to cater to people and families who otherwise have had a hard time finding a pet-friendly vacation rental, forcing them to leave their cherished pets at home or at a boarding kennel. The portal enables you to navigate around different countries, regions, states, and towns to find dog-friendly homes to rent for your vacation.

Otalo's Dog-Friendly Vacation Rental Search portal can be found at:
www.otalo.com/dog-friendly-vacation-rentals

Otalo's Vacation Rental Search

"No one likes to show up on vacation and see a bunch of rental houses that you wish you had rented but never saw online," said co-founder Mike Giles, "with Otalo you can see all of the choices in one place and save and share them while you're planning your vacation."

With Otalo, you no longer have to wade through hundreds of different vacation rental websites trying to find a great vacation rental. Otalo lets you use a single search to find your perfect vacation rental across hundreds of thousands of listings from across the many vacation rental sites the web. With Otalo you enter your preferences once - price range, number of bedrooms, location, amenities and then search once to find your favorite vacation rental. You can save your favorites for the future as well as share the homes you've found with your friends via email, twitter, facebook, and more! Otalo has been described as the "Kayak" of vacation rentals, referring to the flight search website.

Otalo is a vertical search engine that crawls the web constantly, searching for more quality vacation rentals to include in its search index, much like Google does. Otalo's partners include HomeAway, Escapia, Zonder, PackLate, InterHome, We Need A Vacation, Rentalo, Vacation Roost, and many more.

More Information

For additional information about the next-generation Otalo search engine for vacation rentals, you can contact Baer Tierkel at +1 413 658 8133 or visit Otalo on the web at:

• Otalo - www.otalo.com
• About Otalo - www.otalo.com/about
• The Otalo Blog - www.otalo.com/blog
• Follow Otalo on Twitter - www.twitter.com/otalo

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Otalo Expands to more than 460,000 Vacation Rentals Worldwide

Vacation Rental Search Engine adds new partners HomeAway, Escapia, and Vacation Roost to vacation rentals search index.

Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. January 23, 2010 -- Otalo (http://www.otalo.com) has expanded its vacation rental search index to include over 460,000 vacation homes around the world. That's an increase of over 260,000 new vacation homes to their search inventory. In January Otalo launched a next-generation vacation rentals search engine - www.otalo.com - that searches across the internet's many different vacation rentals sites, giving people planning vacations access to hundreds of thousands vacation rental listings with a single powerful search.

Expansion

"We started Otalo with 200,000 vacation homes and in just a few months we've over doubled our inventory to more than 460,000 vacation rentals, said Baer Tierkel, one of Otalo's founders. "Our partnerships with great rental sites such as HomeAway, Escapia, Vacation Roost and others allow us to deliver qualified renters directly to their sites while providing renters a really easy way - a single search - to search across all the web for their perfect vacation rental with a single search."

A Single Search accesses 460,000 Vacation Rentals

There is no need to wade through hundreds of different vacation rental websites trying to find a great vacation rental. Otalo lets you use a single search to find your perfect vacation rental across 460,000 listings from many different websites including HomeAway, Escapia, Zonder, We Need A Vacation, Rentalo, Vacation Roost, and many more. With Otalo you enter your criteria once - price range, number of bedrooms, location, amenities and then search once to find your favorite vacation rental. Then you can share the homes you've found with your friends via email, twitter, facebook, and more! Otalo is free service to both renters and vacation rental sites.

"Looking for a vacation rental at the beach in the cold of February should be fun and not tedious," said co-founder Mike Giles, "It's actually a lot of fun to browse through all the great photos of cool homes in faraway warm places from Orlando to to Spain to Tahiti. As the world-wide economy continues to be tough on vacationers, vacation rentals serve as a great alternative to more costly hotels and resorts."

New Vacation Rental Partners

With the addition of HomeAway, Escapia, Rentalo, and VacationRoost, Otalo is helping more and more vacation rental websites by delivering qualified vacation renters directly to their websites for bookings and information (like Google, but for vacation rentals). Otalo displays all properties fairly (as any search engine should) and the users then click-through to the source site. Otalo does not take direct listings or bookings, and refers property owners and renters to its source sites to list their vacation rentals. There are no charges or fees to vacation rental websites to be included in the Otalo search index.

About Otalo

Otalo was built by Mike Giles and Baer Tierkel, veteran software industry entrepreneurs. They found themselves at their local cafe complaining about how *many* different sites listed thousands of vacation homes - each site making them re-enter their search information - with no central place to collect their favorites and share with friends. "There didn't seem to be a single, usable site that would search all these sites for you," said Tierkel, "we needed a Google for vacation home rentals. We had a good amount of caffeine coursing through us and decided, hey, we should just build one - one that's easy-to-use, powerful, and fun."

The name Otalo (ō Â· tal Â· ō) was derived after deep and long market research (ie. gabbing with the regulars of the local cafe) by combining the Zen symbol enzo - "O" - with the Finnish word for house - "talo". The founders (after too many cups of tea) figured to bring a Zen calmness to looking for a Finnish rental house. Well, any rental house. It was *so* obvious. Well, you get the idea.

For additional information about the next-generation Otalo search engine for vacation rentals, you can contact Baer Tierkel at +1 413 658 8133 or visit Otalo on the web at:

• Otalo - www.otalo.com
• About Otalo - www.otalo.com/about
• The Otalo Blog - www.otalo.com/blog
• Follow Otalo on Twitter - www.twitter.com/otalo

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Otalo Launches Next-Generation Vacation Rental Search Engine

Otalo.com lets you search across the many different vacation rental sites on the web with one search. Over 200,000 vacation rental listings around the world can be reached in a single, powerful search. Favorite vacation homes can be saved and shared with friends.

Amherst, Massachusetts -- January 5, 2009 -- Otalo has launched a next-generation vacation rentals search engine - www.otalo.com - that searches across the internet's many different vacation rentals sites, giving people planning vacations access to over 200,000 worldwide vacation rental listings with a single powerful search.

Saving Time Planning a Vacation

Otalo eliminates the cumbersome process of finding and visiting multiple vacation home rental sites and continually re-entering vacation information. This next-generation search engine combines a Google-like ability to search many different vacation rental sites with a simple, image-filled interface to help vacationers find the perfect spot. Just enter your vacation rental needs once, and let Otalo search all the different rental sites for you.

Otalo searches over 200,000 rental listings world-wide in both popular vacation destinations like Cape Cod, Orlando, and Spain as well as out-of-the-way spots like Alaska and Tahiti. Each vacation home is displayed with photos, descriptions, amenities, costs, and availability. Otalo provides a central planning space for each user where they can save their favorite vacation homes and share them with friends and fellow travelers.

"Using a search engine like Otalo to find a vacation home is much less time-intensive and cumbersome for folks," said Baer Tierkel, one of Otalo's co-founders. "It used to be that you had to jump between all the different vacation rental sites and re-enter all your information each time. Otalo can search them all and save you so much time - and you can share your favorite vacation homes with friends!"

Otalo's easy to use website allows you to search directly for a vacation home using a specific location and vacation rental attributes - like cost, availability, # of bedrooms and baths, and amenities. If you're not sure of where you want to go, you can also browse the millions of vacation home photos from around the world, looking at all the beautiful homes in exciting places. Just like any search engine, you can then click through to the source vacation rental site to make reservations and gather more information. Searching for homes on Otalo is free of charge.

"Lots of work and fun have gone into making vacation planning just a wee bit easier for everyone," said co-founder Mike Giles, "It's an awesome way to quickly search all those rental sites, turning a previously tedious process into an enjoyable one." As the world-wide economy continues to be tough on vacationers, vacation rentals serve as a great alternative to more costly hotels and resorts.

Direct Leads for Vacation Rental Websites

Otalo adds great value to vacation rental websites by delivering highly qualified vacation renters directly to source websites for bookings and information. Otalo displays all properties fairly (as any search engine should) and the users then click-through to the source site (like Google, but for vacation rentals). Otalo does not take direct listings or bookings, and refers property owners and renters to its source sites to list their vacation rentals. There are no charges or fees to vacation rental websites to be included in the Otalo search index.

About Otalo

Otalo was built by Mike Giles and Baer Tierkel, veteran software industry entrepreneurs. They found themselves at their local cafe complaining about how *many* different sites listed thousands of vacation homes - each site making them re-enter their search information - with no central place to collect their favorites. "There didn't seem to be a single, usable site that would search all these sites for you," said Tierkel, "we needed a Google for vacation home rentals. We had a good amount of caffeine coursing through us and decided, hey, we should just build one - one that's easy-to-use, powerful, and fun."

The name Otalo (ō Â· tal Â· ō) was derived after deep and long market research (ie. gabbing with the regulars of the local cafe) by combining the Zen symbol enzo - "O" - with the Finnish word for house - "talo". The founders (after too many cups of tea) figured to bring a Zen calmness to looking for a Finnish rental house. Well, any rental house. It was *so* obvious. Well, you get the idea.

For additional information about the next-generation Otalo search engine for vacation rentals, you can contact Baer Tierkel at +1 413 658 8133 or visit Otalo on the web at:

• Otalo - www.otalo.com
• About Otalo - www.otalo.com/about
• The Otalo Blog - www.otalo.com/blog
• Follow Otalo on Twitter - www.twitter.com/otalo

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