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About Victorex
Victorex has been providing computer software, hardware, hardware maintenance, and
programming services for over twenty years. Although we have provided products and
services to a wide variety of businesses, today our focus and expertise is in providing the
reservations, management and Internet software that Vacation Rental Managers and
Timeshare Resorts need to operate at maximum
efficiency in today's Internet-driven global economy. We are also skilled webmasters
and provide website hosting services for Vacation Rental Managers and Timeshare
Resorts.
This page provides some history about Victorex. For more information about
our current products and services, please Click on the appropriate link to the left.
Or, Click Contact Us and call, FAX or E-mail us
with your request for information.
Victorex was founded in the late 1970's by John V. Kjellman, who remains
active in the business as our president and chief technology officer. In the pre-PC days, we
worked primarily with Alpha Microsystems minicomputers, and operated a thriving computer
maintenance service in the San Francisco Bay Area, that serviced a wide variety of business
and educational institutions, including wholesale tour operators, home builders,
occupational health services providers, dentists, steel fabricators,
schools, vacation rental managers, and several other types of business. Our forte (and
reputation) in those days was being the best in Northern California at keeping
mission-critical Alpha Microsystems computers running with minimal downtime.
Despite our early focus on hardware (that's where the money was!), we
were busy developing software. First came cashflow analysis software for one of
California's leading home builders. That software is still in use (2001). Then came
our Computerized Accounting and Payroll System (CAPS), which was highly-regarded
at the time by the many firms that used it. (It is still in limited use.)
At the same time, we were working on what was one of the first
software packages for vacation rental managers written to run on a "microcomputer." This
project was commissioned by Mickey Holzman, the west coast dean of Vacation Rental
Management, and president and co-founder of Holzman and Daw, Inc. Holzman and Daw was
founded to provide home and condominium owners at Pajaro Dunes on Monterey Bay,
California with an alternative to the developer for property
management and vacation rental services.
As time passed, we spent more and more time on our software for Vacation Rental
Managers, which became known as RPMRS (Resort Property Management
Reservation System). As word spread,
we installed RPMRS in the offices of several leading west coast Vacation Rental
Managers, the most successful of which, Lake Tahoe Accommodations, remains our largest
customer today (Click Links to Resorts). Lake Tahoe Accommodations now operates from four
offices in two states.
In addition to developing RPMRS, and helping to keep customers' systems running,
John Kjellman assumed a leading role in helping all Vacation Rental Managers operate more
efficiently, more wisely, and less stressfully. The first step was to co-host with
Bill and Doll Jelavich a
meeting of five Vacation Rental Managers (Spring 1985 at Monterey Dunes Company),
where information and ideas were exchanged. Solutions to common problems were
discussed, and participants learned that Vacation
Rental Management brought with it certain problems that couldn't be eliminated, but which
could be managed. More important, the participants came to realize they were
providing a very valuable service to both owners and renters that they should feel
proud about, and that they should be compensated fairly for their efforts.
This first meeting led to several others, and soon Vacation Rental Managers from the
east coast were traveling to attend the west coast meetings. About two years after the
first meeting,
what is now the Vacation Rental Managers Association (VRMA) was formed. John Kjellman was
named head of the first executive committee, then served as the association's executive
director for a couple of years, under the presidencies of co-founder and first president
Bill Futrell, and second president Byron Hendricks. Mickey Holzman,
another of the founders, was a later president of VRMA.
Meanwhile, development of RPMRS continued, as we answered the calls of our existing
customers for software to handle their growing businesses (growth that was in many
respects made possible by RPMRS). The most significant enhancement was full support
for shared-ownership properties, which was added to meet the needs of B.J. Enterprise in
Chelan, Washington (no longer in business), and Ridgepine (The Ridge) in Sunriver, Oregon.
We created an add-on module that supports all types of shared-ownership (Timeshare) plans,
yet allows for the separation of the tasks of maintaining owner calendars from that of
vacation rental reservation-taking. This makes it easy for reservationists who may have
only a casual knowledge of Timeshare programs and week codes to book reservations in
shared-ownership units, just as they do for single-owner vacation homes.
Today our work is focused in three principle areas:
Development and support of Internet vacation rental search engines and software
for online bookings.
Development of RPMRS to provide improved support for companies managing multiple
resorts and resort offices.
Development of Application Service Provider (ASP) services, to allow any Vacation
Rental Manager or Timeshare Resort to obtain the full capabilities of our RPMRS
software via the Internet, without the purchase of new software or hardware.
Please Click on a link to the left for more information about our current products and
services.
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