How a one-person operation with 30 short-term rentals used Guesty to get their life back

Meet Denise

Denise Hammonds is the definition of resilient. When their boss drained their company of all its assets and left them with nothing, she and her friend took this curve-ball as an opportunity to venture out on their own. 

They started small, providing cleaning services to a handful of vacation rental owners and managers on the Spanish island of Tenerife, but over the course of four years, they evolved into a full-on property management company with 11 listings under their supervision. 

That’s when differing visions for the company led them to amicably part ways. While her colleague preferred to keep the business small, Denise dreamed bigger. They divided up their properties, Denise taking only four because she felt their location in Costa Adeje was more strategic.

She opened her own office, grew her portfolio to just under 30 properties, and became the one-woman powerhouse she is today.

The Challenge

Denise was working with a manual system, which involved lots and lots of excel spreadsheets and left her with very little free time. She was working twelve-hour shifts, showing up at her office at 8am and rarely heading home before 8pm. Her days were spent doing administrative work, managing the housekeeping staff and constantly updating her ever-growing collection of spreadsheets. 

The sheer volume of work required to sync all of her calendars and avoid double bookings forced Denise to limit the number of booking channels she used to two – TripAdvisor and her own direct booking site. 

In search of something more efficient, she spent thousands on different operating systems, all of which she found either difficult to use or significantly lacking in functionality. 

For one, she needed to be able to process payments in multiple currencies, something none of the solutions she turned to could help her with. Another thing they failed to do was produce housekeeping reports, which Denise desperately needed in order to keep track of the statuses of her now relatively large collection of vacation rentals. 

Sound familiar?

The Solution

Denise was thrilled when she happened upon Guesty. She could tell from the first few minutes of the product demo that this was a software she could master and actually use. 

“It seemed so very easy compared to all the others,” she says. “ I thought, I can work with this one.”

Aside from enabling her to work with multiple currencies and easily generate housekeeping & owner reports, Guesty completely removed the burden of reservation processing from Denise’s shoulders. She could now simply add a reservation to her calendar and everything from alignment with other booking calendars to the creation of housekeeping tasks would be set in motion.

“It was everything that I needed in one package.”

The Results

Since implementing Guesty, Denise has experienced tremendous relief. Not only has the ability to run her entire business from one dashboard allowed her to give up her office and cut her outgoing costs by 35%, she’s been able to get her life back! Guesty’s software has cut Denise’s work days from twelve hours to four. That’s over 50 hours a week she can dedicate to spending time with her family and actually enjoying the fruits of her labor. 

Since she can now sync her calendars with the click of her mouse, Denise has expanded her marketing presence to include Airbnb and is planning to add her listings to other OTAs as well, something that would have been incredibly draining, if not impossible, without a proper channel manager at her side. 

She also plans to gradually take on more properties. After all, she has the time. 

Denise appreciates the patience she’s gotten from the Guesty team throughout her journey and feels that they’re ready to walk her through anything she needs in order to improve her understanding of the platform and use it to run her business more efficiently.

“Guesty, in my humble opinion, is the best out there – most definitely. Give it a go.”