Creating memorable experiences for guests
Background
Nestled in the heart of Austin, Texas, Stay Local Austin is a family-run, full-service property management company. Founded by Tommy and Angela Emmett, and recently acquired by Portoro, a premium vacation rental brand, the company is dedicated to creating positive, memorable experiences for short-term rental owners and their guests.
Whether it’s sponsoring their local performing arts festival Fusebox, attending to guests’ needs in the blink of an eye, or providing valuable expertise and experiences in the Austin area — this property management company has a local, authentic feel to it.
Joining Guesty with 12 listings in 2020, their team of 19 work tirelessly to reflect Stay Local Austin’s core values of genuine care, integrity, and exceeding expectations across the now 37 properties that they manage.
The Challenge
At the beginning of 2020, with 12 properties to manage, the Emmetts had reached a breaking point. They were overloaded working with tons of spreadsheets and across multiple independent platforms to manage reservations, track internal activities, manage communications, and provide property owners with insights. It meant everyone on the team was working over 60 hours a week.
Stay Local Austin needed a solution that would allow them to both streamline operations and to scale—and fast. They wanted to be able to centralize operations and have one source of truth that would all information and distribute it to different channels.
After thorough research, and even pursuing the idea of developing their own software, Stay Austin Local finally found exactly what they were looking for. Guesty.
“We chose Guesty because of the feature set, intuitive user interface, and open architecture.”
The Solution
Stay Local Austin started using Guesty in mid-2020 and hasn’t looked back since.
From inspectors to housekeeping managers, they have ten team members set up on Guesty. Thanks to Task Management and Auto Tasks capabilities, Angela and Tommy can relax with peace of mind that their team are doing what they need to do in order to keep their ship sailing smoothly.
Guesty’s suite of Revenue Management tools has also allowed Stay Local Austin to easily implement a different rate strategy for each of their properties, providing a much-welcomed boost to their annual turnover. Plus, they’ve onboarded PriceLabs, one of the many dynamic pricing partners available on Guesty’s ever-growing Marketplace.
“We couldn’t do what we’re doing without Guesty. It’s allowed me to focus on Revenue Management and pricing so that we can grow our revenue with the same number of properties”
When it comes to their favorite feature, Guesty’s Owners Portal is definitely in the mix. In fact, when looking to attract homeowners to Stay Local Austin, many potential customers demanded a portal that could provide homeowners access to their calendar and revenue projections at the click of a button. For Stay Local Austin, this feature was a driving force behind choosing Guesty in the first place.
Why does Tommy love our Owner’s Portal?
“Certainly the ease of use, the different ways that you can see all the information, owners can access reports, and the power to control what information the owners have access too”
The Results
For Angela and Tommy, Guesty has been about so much more than making more money.
“To date we believe it’s allowed us to reduce administrative time by 25%. It would be more but we keep finding new features we want to implement and train our team on”
Overall, Guesty saves Stay Local Austin at least 60 hours per week. And with the time saved, they’ve been able to focus on growing their marketing activities, owner relations, and provide additional services for their guests.
Since joining Guesty back in 2020, Stay Local Austin has taken on an additional 25 listings, marking a whopping 208% listings growth.
And in their first year with Guesty, their revenue also grew +70%. Tommy attributes “at least 40% of this revenue growth directly down to Guesty”, which translated into them grossing $2.4 million in 2022 on Airbnb alone.
Stay Local Austin consistently outperforms its local competitors with regard to its occupancy rate, averaging 65% occupancy across their portfolio.
The Future
So what does the future hold for Stay Local Austin? Stay Local Austin was recently acquired by Portoro, a vacation rental management company.
“We heard offers from other leaders in the space, but we are certain that Portoro is the right company to continue our mission of creating locally-sourced, meaningful vacation rental experiences for guests”
And Surprise – Portoro are also Guesty users, a factor that Angela and Tommy considered incredibly important when evaluating potential buyers.
Together, they’re successfully managing a portfolio of 27 properties, and have another 7 on the way later this month. While doing so, they plan to continue contributing to their community by offering discounted rental fees for artistic groups and sponsoring local events.
