A 250% revenue boost for a socially responsible property management company

Meet VillaKey

VillaKey is a family-run company that offers travelers a choice of beautiful villas spanning one of the most popular vacation destinations in the United States – Orlando, Florida.

But charming interior design and alluring facilities aren’t what earned CEO Alice Horn the honor of doing the coin toss for the last Citrus Bowl in front of 14 million viewers; it’s the extra efforts that the company makes to accommodate travelers with autism and sensory issues.

While VillaKey caters to all types of families and travelers, the team feels strongly about its social responsibility as a vacation rental company. Alice’s father was on the autism spectrum, so she understands quite well the challenges involved in staying in new and unfamiliar places for someone with autism. That’s why VillaKey strives to help families living with autism make vacation memories, providing them with property rental options in quiet locations that feature soft lighting, extra safety and security measures, educational materials for caregivers and more.

The Challenge

VillaKey met the same challenges as every other successful short-term property management business: their rapid expansion demanded they either dramatically increase personnel count or find a solution that could support their growth and enable them to provide the same level of guest experience they had been offering guests as a smaller company.

The Solution

Alice and her team began searching for a property management platform and soon found that Guesty not only ticked all their boxes, with channel integrations that would facilitate easy promotion of their listings on their preferred OTAs, it also featured a unique service VillaKey knew would be an invaluable asset when it came to maintaining their stellar customer relations and capturing leads that inquire at any time of day – 24/7 Guest Communication.

The Results

VillaKey’s use of 24/7 Guesty communication led to a game-changing decrease in the amount of work hours required to tend to their guests, one they estimate to be around 50 hours per week! 

In addition, to offer competitive rates to travelers, the company integrated with Guesty partner Beyond Pricing, a dynamic pricing tool that enables them to set prices that are both appealing and strategic, resulting in drastic increases to VillaKey’s occupancy rates. 

This led to even more portfolio growth for the company, which went from 40 to 85 properties with Guesty in less than a year. Naturally, this coincided with a most welcome revenue boost of 250%.

More time, more guests, more properties and a whole lot more money – it couldn’t have come to a more deserving company.