115. They Bought the STR Property Management Business Private Equity Passed On

I'm assuming you guys are in Tahoe right now.

Yeah, we're at one of the houses.

We rented it for the month.

There you go.

Now, thinking about that, let me maybe walk me going back when you guys first got into everything.

And I'm sure there's hundreds of things that you guys are thinking about.

What have you seen as priorities getting into the weeds? What are some shocking things that you guys found? Walk us through kind of the whole getting into the business.

You guys, you guys decide to uplift part of your lives and head to Tahoe.

Tell me what what's kind of going through your head at the moment.

I think we learned a lot of improvements we could have made during due diligence, especially since the company was so much bigger than the other company that we're like, we're not going to drag them into our systems.

And this company does do, we do 30% direct bookings.

So we want to keep that brand.

We have people that have been staying us for 25 years in a row, every single summer.

So we have a completely different demographic where we needed to keep their systems.

And so we just assumed things like, hey, they have automated messaging.

Hey, a lot of these things, rental and ID collection is all very, rental and ID collection is very straightforward.

But some of that stuff isn't.

So that's stuff that we were like, oh, we just assumed that there were some improvements we could make.

And now we're like, okay, we've got to actually do this.

So we were, we had our guest experience people manually sending check-in instructions every day for 40 to 60 check-ins on a Thursday or Friday.

uh when we got here so i think that was one of the biggest surprises and something we've definitely improved over the summer and we're still making improvements there and we're onboarding a new software to help with you know damage waivers and that kind of stuff as well

I think something else too, so I'm focused on maintenance and operations right now.

And going back to the company operating in an old school way, they're still using paper receipts.

The maintenance guys are coming by the office to turn in paper receipts.

And a lot of times they're weeks behind.

I'm assuming you guys are in Tahoe right now.

Yeah, we're at one of the houses.

We rented it for the month.

There you go.

Now, thinking about that, let me maybe walk me going back when you guys first got into everything.

And I'm sure there's hundreds of things that you guys are thinking about.

What have you seen as priorities getting into the weeds? What are some shocking things that you guys found? Walk us through kind of the whole getting into the business.

You guys, you guys decide to uplift part of your lives and head to Tahoe.

Tell me what what's kind of going through your head at the moment.

I think we learned a lot of improvements we could have made during due diligence, especially since the company was so much bigger than the other company that we're like, we're not going to drag them into our systems.

And this company does do, we do 30% direct bookings.

So we want to keep that brand.

We have people that have been staying us for 25 years in a row, every single summer.

So we have a completely different demographic where we needed to keep their systems.

And so we just assumed things like, hey, they have automated messaging.

Hey, a lot of these things, rental and ID collection is all very, rental and ID collection is very straightforward.

But some of that stuff isn't.

So that's stuff that we were like, oh, we just assumed that there were some improvements we could make.

And now we're like, okay, we've got to actually do this.

So we were, we had our guest experience people manually sending check-in instructions every day for 40 to 60 check-ins on a Thursday or Friday.

uh when we got here so i think that was one of the biggest surprises and something we've definitely improved over the summer and we're still making improvements there and we're onboarding a new software to help with you know damage waivers and that kind of stuff as well

I think something else too, so I'm focused on maintenance and operations right now.

And going back to the company operating in an old school way, they're still using paper receipts.

The maintenance guys are coming by the office to turn in paper receipts.

And a lot of times they're weeks behind.