Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals Alex and Annie

In today’s episode, Alex and Annie are joined by Christina Thoreson, who with her husband Thor, built Chattanooga Vacation Rentals into a sizable and well-run outfit in Tennessee prior to selling in 2022.

Christina recalls their early struggles including not knowing how to run housekeeping and maintenance, and struggling to figure out the legal and operational aspects of the business. Christina and Thor were early adopters of technology, and although they went through a series of software changes, they had finally found the perfect tech and operational recipe in 2021 - and that’s exactly when the doors started knocking with offers to acquire the business.

Christina shares her and Thor’s plans for the future, which she says may include getting back into the industry…perhaps through a franchise.

Learn more about building and selling a successful vacation rental company and shifting careers as a sommelier in this episode of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals.

“REAL” TALK

Christina: Seizing a golden opportunity at the best terms
"In a three week, first in a 24-hour period, and then about a three-week period, we had four interested parties. And I said, Thor, what? We weren't gonna sell. What do we do? And he said, I think it's a sign You know, to get two offers in this period of time, this just doesn't happen. We just need to move forward."

"We probably spent six weeks negotiating that. Well, the first offer we spent about three, two, or three weeks on and just couldn't figure out a way to do it. That second offer, we spent about six weeks really hammering out terms, wanting a lot of assurances about how things were gonna move forward."

Christina: Getting guarantees for their people was a top priority
"One of the things we negotiated, we spent about three weeks negotiating, is a clause in the contract that said you have to keep our people for at least six months. You absolutely cannot change their pay, you can only increase it, and you have to give them these benefits you're promising them. If you don't do that, we have a contract, we'll sue you."

Connect with Christina:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinahthoreson/
Email: christinahthoreson@gmail.com
Phone: 423-4630770

This episode is brought to you by Casago, Guest Ranger, and Good Neighbor Tech.
Visit AlexAndAnniesList.com to view our top picks for the best suppliers in vacation rental technology and services.
Special thanks to Rev & Research for being the presenting sponsor of Alex & Annie’s List.

Connect with Alex and Annie and get more real vacation rental goodness:
Alex Husner | Annie Holcombe
AlexAndAnniePodcast.com

If you enjoyed this episode of ALEX & ANNIE: The Real Women Of Vacation Rentals, make sure to visit our socials, leave us a like, a comment, or share our content with the crowd! Don’t forget to subscribe!

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In today’s episode, Alex and Annie sit down with Graham Donoghue, the CEO of Sykes Holidays Cottages Group. When Graham was brought on Sykes, the brand was lacking a narrative and a story. They were large and profitable but departments were siloed with no real rallying cry to drive the company forward.

Today, Sykes has 25 brands in its portfolio and 24,000 properties under management in the UK and New Zealand, making the brand a major player in the vacation rental industry. One interesting thing about Sykes is its approach to acquiring businesses.

They intentionally retain the brand of the businesses they acquire to maintain continuity and protect the legacy of the local brand. This strategy helped Sykes grow while maintaining the values that made the local brands successful in the first place.

Graham shares the technologies they developed during the pandemic, from their switchboard that optimizes cost per acquisition and push notifications on their app, to pulling insights from the data to provide value to end users.

Learn more about accelerating growth and leveraging technology in this episode of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals.

“REAL” TALK

Graham: COVID presented a unique challenge and opportunity
"During that 18-month period, we offered a hundred and 54 million sterling of refunds back to consumers. But when the government said that people could travel in the UK, and every week it was a different message, but as soon as they did say they could travel, then there were 10,000 people calling for their money back, but there were also 10,000 people calling or going onto the website trying to book a holiday. So it was like famine to feast in a heartbeat."

Graham: Technology frees up your best people to deliver excellent service
"The reason why we have 2000 people is we're a technology-driven company but we use people, we use our human capital to hopefully deliver exceptional service. What I'm always looking at is I don't want the really clever, smart people I have a doing tasks that could be done by technology, that don't have a lot of value to the end stakeholder. But actually being there, you know, 10 o'clock at night on the phone when there's a problem with your boiler and be able to service that and deal with it, that has value."

Connect with Graham:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamdonoghue/
Website: https://www.sykescottages.co.uk/

This episode is brought to you by Casago, Guest Ranger, and Good Neighbor Tech.
Visit AlexAndAnniesList.com to view our top picks for the best suppliers in vacation rental technology and services.
Special thanks to Rev & Research for being the presenting sponsor of Alex & Annie’s List.

Connect with Alex and Annie and get more real vacation rental goodness:
Alex Husner | Annie Holcombe
AlexAndAnniePodcast.com

If you enjoyed this episode of ALEX & ANNIE: The Real Women Of Vacation Rentals, make sure to visit our socials, leave us a like, a comment, or share our content with the crowd! Don’t forget to subscribe!

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In today’s episode, Alex and Annie chat with David Weiss, the CEO of Whimstay. He shares his background in vacation rentals and the global payments space and his journey to becoming Whimstay's CEO.

David discusses how last-minute bookings are their niche and that their goal is to increase incremental bookings while offering the best deals to travelers. He talks about the initiatives they have for this year like partnering with a technology company, intelligent pricing, and expanding into Europe.

Whimstay believes in flexibility and offers broad payment options, including their patented Split Pay option, to create superior experiences. Find out more about how David and Whimstay serve the needs of property owners and travelers in this episode of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals.

“REAL” TALK

David: Superior experiences for both property owners and travelers
"Our mission really is to offer exclusive and unique discounts to travelers with a superior experience, but really just the property owners and managers attract incremental guests and generate incremental bookings. The core of that mission is the last-minute window."

David: Offer travelers the flexibility to pay how they want
"The aspect of flexibility, which for us which would also be inclusive of making it easier to cancel and book and change and extend even with the type of value proposition that we have, in addition to saying let's give the traveler however they want to pay for their vacation. Let's give them the flexibility to pay how they want."

Connect with David:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-weiss-aa39ba22/
Website: https://www.whimstay.com/
Email: david.weiss@whimstay.com

This episode is brought to you by Casago, Guest Ranger, and Good Neighbor Tech.
Visit AlexAndAnniesList.com to view our top picks for the best suppliers in vacation rental technology and services.
Special thanks to Rev & Research for being the presenting sponsor of Alex & Annie’s List.

Connect with Alex and Annie and get more real vacation rental goodness:
Alex Husner | Annie Holcombe
AlexAndAnniePodcast.com

If you enjoyed this episode of ALEX & ANNIE: The Real Women Of Vacation Rentals, make sure to visit our socials, leave us a like, a comment, or share our content with the crowd! Don’t forget to subscribe!
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In today’s episode, Alex and Annie sit down with Steve Trover, the Founder, and CEO of Better Talent. Knowing a person makes connecting their talents with the right jobs easier. Interestingly, Steve is also the one who brought together Annie and her current role today at Homes & Villas by Marriott International.

Steve talks about the people stack and how optimizing human capital has a profound effect because it is most companies' single biggest cost. He shares how a company's integrator works with its visionary to execute the vision, as well as the difficulty in hiring for this role.

Find out more about the best practices for acquiring your human capital, from full-time employees to consultants to virtual assistants, in this episode of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals.

“REAL” TALK

Steve: Optimize the people stack because it is the biggest cost
"The people stack though, really lends itself and speaks to the fact that most companies today, if they're running optimally, don't just have full-time employees with big salaries. They might have full-time, part-time, independent contractors, consultants, global talent, you know, virtual assistance, that type of thing."

"And what we do with our clients is really look at their overall cost structure, which by the way, if you look at a VRMs P&L, I've looked at hundreds, if not a thousand of them, the number one cost by far on every P&L of every VRM I've ever looked at is people."

Steve: Integrators work with the team to execute the vision
"If they don't have somebody to execute that vision or a group of individuals that again, are rowing in the right direction, that vision is not going to happen. And you know, I ran a really great company, I believe for a lot of years. I waited way too long to get my integrator. And so the integrator in EOS speak is really the person that takes that vision, works with the individuals on the team, the different departmental leads the leadership team to execute on the vision."

Connect with Steve:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bettertalent/
Website: https://bettertalent.com/
Email: steve@bettertalent.com

This episode is brought to you by Casago, Guest Ranger, and Good Neighbor Tech.
Visit AlexAndAnniesList.com to view our top picks for the best suppliers in vacation rental technology and services.
Special thanks to Rev & Research for being the presenting sponsor of Alex & Annie’s List.

Connect with Alex and Annie and get more real vacation rental goodness:
Alex Husner | Annie Holcombe
AlexAndAnniePodcast.com

If you enjoyed this episode of ALEX & ANNIE: The Real Women Of Vacation Rentals, make sure to visit our socials, leave us a like, a comment, or share our content with the crowd! Don’t forget to subscribe!
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In today’s episode, Alex and Annie welcome Steve Milo and Miriam Ramsey, the Founder/CEO and Regional Business Development Director of Vtrips respectively. They discuss the latest trends observed from the IMN Conference, the latest headlines from Vacasa, the new purpose-built cabins of Vtrips, fighting for smarter legislation, and organizing people in the collaborative committee of the Vacation Rental Management Association (VRMA).

Inside Current Headlines

Steve shares his experience as a panelist at the IMN Conference which was very different from the traditional vacation rentals conferences, with a much more investor-heavy crowd. He also points out how they’re proactively lowering their ADRs to get occupancy, while Miriam highlights how important it is to communicate with homeowners this year in an unpredictable travel economy.

Inside Advocacy

Steve discusses how he helped set up the Texas Professional Vacation Rental Coalition. This organization is now lobbying for a bill that preempts local governments from regulating vacation rentals so we can be treated more like hotels, bed and breakfasts, and timeshares. Steve also brings to light how the VRMA collaborative committee helps the vacation rental industry lobby for smart regulation.

Find out more about Steve and Miriam's industry insights and Steve’s health tips in this episode of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals.

“REAL” TALK

Steve: The IMN Conference pulled in a lot of investors
"In the course of two days, I met so many people representing funds, in some cases small funds, large funds, in some cases multi-billion dollar funds, who were all looking to get into the short-term rental on the asset side. So they were looking to like, how do we buy large pieces of vacation rentals?"

Steve: Join the VRMA to lobby support for the vacation rental industry
"The VRMA, because they raised so much money last year, is even giving grants to state coalitions and to local communities that are forming alliances like Tybee Island to try to fight some of these bad regulations. But the VRMA exists and so I hope more people join the VRMA."

Connect with Steve:
LinkedIn (Steve) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevemilo/
Email: steve.milo@vtrips.com

Connect with Miriam:
LinkedIn (Miram) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/miriam-ramsey-252213139/
Email: miriam.ramsey@vtrips.com

Find out more about Vtrips

Check out our previous episode with Steve, our most downloaded episode of 2022 here.

Connect with Alex and Annie and get more real vacation rental goodness:
Alex Husner | Annie Holcombe
AlexAndAnniePodcast.com

If you enjoyed this episode of ALEX & ANNIE: The Real Women Of Vacation Rentals, make sure to visit our socials, leave us a like, a comment, or share our content with the crowd! Don’t forget to subscribe!
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Elevate a Vacation Guest’s Experience

In today’s episode, Alex and Annie welcome Mike Flaskey, Former CEO of Diamond Resorts International and Founder of Mike Flaskey Entertainment, as he gives his second public interview since leading the sale of Diamond Resorts to Hilton Grand Vacations in June 2021.

COVID profoundly affected Diamond but innovation allowed them to rebound quickly. Mike shares how they did this and how they pioneered a new way to be valuated on multiples of EBITDA.

He talks about the cutting-edge innovations that timeshare sales and marketing teams did alongside rental managers, as well as the success of Diamond's Events of a Lifetime. Mike also discusses why timeshare companies are not able to represent vacation rentals on the sales table even though the industries appear to coexist within the same ecosystem.

Find out more about Mike and how he grew Diamond Resorts through strategic acquisitions, partnerships, and organic growth in this latest episode of Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals.

“REAL” TALK

Mike: Drive EBITDA to increase market cap
"If you bring Cole in and Cole Swindell does a concert, it's going to cost a thousand dollars per family to sit down and talk to me. But by the time you factor in that triple close, and you look at the EBITDA dollars that they drive to the bottom line, even though if you may have some slight margin compression, you're driving so many more dollars to the bottom line, that's how these companies are evaluated."

"They basically get a valuation on a multiple of their EBITDA. So if you can drive more of these EBITDA dollars and you put that multiple to it, you're increasing the market capitalization of your company. And so we were a first mover and we saw that."

Connect with Mike:
LinkedIn | Website | Email

This episode is brought to you by Casago, Guest Ranger and Good Neighbor Tech.
Visit AlexAndAnniesList.com to view our top picks for the best suppliers in vacation rental technology and services.
Special thanks to Rev & Research for being the presenting sponsor of Alex & Annie’s List.

Connect with Alex and Annie and get more real vacation rental goodness:
Alex Husner | Annie Holcombe
AlexAndAnniePodcast.com

If you enjoyed this episode of ALEX & ANNIE: The Real Women Of Vacation Rentals, make sure to visit our socials, leave us a like, a comment, or share our content with the crowd! Don’t forget to subscribe!
LinkedIn | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok