Behind the Stays

What’s up friends got a special episode for y’all today featuring my friend Hans Lorei one of the best if not THE BEST designer in the short-term rental space. While I am a real sucker for the traditional, interview syle pod, I also know that sometimes you need content that is short, sweet, and super practical. So, once or twice a month,  I’ll be dropping episodes on the pod that are slightly more...

Meet Matt Whitermore, a  hospitality entrepreneur who buys, builds, and manages RV parks.  In this engaging conversation, Matt shares how he got started buying RV parks and why he believes there’s huge opportunity to disrupt and reimagine this category of travel and real estate investment. Tune in to hear: - The lessons Matt learned after buying his first RV park - How he see experiential hospital...

Meet Kyle Tibbitts , Chief Marketing Officer at Wander , a network of smart, luxury vacation rentals that’s on a mission to verticalize the short-term rental experience.  If you were to have asked Kyle as a 10-year-old what he wanted to be when he grew up, he would have told you a lawyer, which, today, Kyle would tell you would have been a huge mistake. But if you were to have asked Kyle what he w...

In this episode of Behind the Stays, Zach shares five tangible and tactical ideas for how OpenAI's new Sora model will fundamentally change hospitality entrepreneurship.  Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions. Sora is able to generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and back...

Meet Stephanie Gutierrez, the creator of North Country Cabin Co. — a boutique collection of short-term rentals located just 90 minutes from Minnesota's twin cities in Comstock, Wisconsin. Growing up, Stephanie wanted to be an artist — her grandmother had an incredible eye for art and design and Stephanie dreamed of emulating her.  And while she didn’t become a professional artist, her knack for cr...

One of the newest and hottest industry events, STR Wealth Con , just wrapped last week — and we wanted to know what people thought about the event! In this episode, Zach sits down with Wil Slickers (emcee of the event), Sean Wilkinson (Co-Founder of Hostshare and first-time conferences attendee), and Heidie Henriksen ( a vacation rental industry veteran, to get their thoughts on the content, the c...

Meet Jeremy Gall, Founder & CEO of Breezeway  — the leading property care, operations and messaging platform for hospitality entrepreneurs. Growing up, Jermey wanted to be a professional basketball player. And while he never made it into the NBA, he did make it into Law School. But Jeremy’s professional career as an attorney wouldn’t last long because he was bit by that sneaky, but ever so ent...

Meet Meaghan Moylan , Executive Director of Outpost — a Vacation Rental and Property Management company located in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  If you were to have asked Meaghan what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would have told you a cat, a veterinarian, a nurse, or a lawyer — depending on whether she was 3, 10, 15, or 18.  As fate would have it, Meaghan did not become any of the aforemention...

Meet Chris Stephenson, Vice President of Global Development at Marriott Homes & Villas. Chris has spent his career building new, innovative products and services across travel and hospitality.  In February of 2019, Chris was a part of the founding team of Marriott Homes & Villas and in charge of thinking through how best to bring Marriott’s vacation rental home product to life.  In this ep...

Meet Taylor Bates, the creator of The Afton House — a stunning, luxury home made for gathering and nestled in the heart of Virginia wine country. Growing up, Taylor wanted to be an architect or a Fortune 500 CEO — she’s always loved the intersection of marketing, design, and business. After working in a few marketing management and nonprofit leadership roles, Taylor wound up starting her own bouti...

Meet Scott McIntosh, Co-Founder of Back Forty Glamping, a luxurious glamping oasis on 26 acres of land in Meaford, Ontario.  Growing up, Scott wanted to be a farmer — he loved being outdoors and the notion that you could make a life from tilling fields and harvesting crops was incredibly attractive to him. And while Scott wound up pursuing a career as an educator instead, a few years ago he and hi...

Meet Dylan Barahona, General Manager at Canyon of the Eagles, a nature resort and preserve on 940 acres of land, located just 1.5 Hours from Austin, Texas. If you were to have asked Dylan at ten-years-old what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d tell you either a professional baseball player or a chef.  And while neither of those dreams quite panned out, the latter, dream set him on path to purs...

Meet Antonio Gonzalez, President of ÖÖD House — the company behind the instagram famous mirror houses. Antonio is an engineer by trade, but always had a heart for entrepreneurship… So, when the opportunity to co-found Jupe along with past-podcast guest Jeff Wilson and take it through Y Combinator, the world’s most prestigious of startup accelerators, came about, he took it. Antonio learned SO much...

Meet Garett Brown, the visionary and creator behind Cameron Ranch Glamping, a collection of luxury glamping units on 11 acres just an hour outside of Houston, Texas.  Garrett is a professional music producer and traveling DJ who has always loved dabbling in real estate investing. When he wasn’t performing on stage or out on a tour, he’d find himself scrolling through listings dreaming of what it’d...

Meet Brett Deas, a 19-year-old entrepreneur who owns and operates unique stay vacation rentals across the U.S. While his high school buddies were scrolling through TikTok before school and playing video games afterwards, Brett was binging Bigger Pockets podcasts to understand the world of real estate investing. After graduating from high school, Brett decided to try his hand at real estate investi...

Meet Mollie Reese, the host of the popular Stay in Good Company podcast and an experienced community builder who has spent her career working with leading brands across the the food & beverage and events & hospitality industries. Having recently left the world of corporate burnout and the hustle and bustle of city-living behind for a slower way of life, Mollie set out to pursue personal pa...

Meet Assaf Karmon, Co-founder & CEO of Turno — a marketplace that helps vacation rental hosts and property management companies simplify and automate cleaning. Assaf was born and raised in Israel and as a kid his dream was to be a professional soccer player. And while that dream never came to fruition, in part because Assaf spent most of his early sports career sitting on the bench, the determ...

Meet Jake and Leslie, the creators of the Lighthouse Cottage, an oceanfront escape in Cape May, New Jersey.  Jake and Leslie had always dreamed of owning a beach house, but acquiring a property in the competitive Cape May market seemed out of reach. That is until one day Leslie was scrolling on Zillow and noticed a new listing for a 100 year old property located right on the beach. The home clearl...

Meet Rob Patterson, an incredible hospitality leader whose most recent post was as the CEO of Best Western in the United Kingdom. Rob grew up in a very remote town in the country of Australia. Growing up, Rob dreamed of becoming a professional footballer — so much so that when an opportunity to move to Sydney to pursue his dream came to fruition, he left home without thinking twice. And while he n...

Meet Amber and Charlie Pledge — the founders of Kabn Company, a new hospitality brand focused on creating luxurious, and sustainable nature-immersed escapes. Amber and Charlie have always loved to travel. The couple has been fortunate enough to live and work in major hubs of innovation like London, San Francisco, and Dubai.   And while Amber and Charlie both love working hard, climbing the corpora...

Meet Steve Turk — a decorated professional who has spent over two decades working in luxury hospitality. Steve’s father was a susccessful attorney. From time to time, his dad would bring him along on work travel and Steve remembers being in total awe at the hotels he and his dad would stay in. There was something so magical about walking into an ordnately decorated hotel lobby and being greeted as...

Meet Ashley and Andy — the creators of The Glass Treehouse , a stunning couple’s stay in Banner Elk, North Carolina close to downtown Boone.  Andy is a mechanic by trade.  After spending years working in the airline industry, he decided to open up his own auto body shop in Charlotte, North Carolina. While Ashely and Andy loved the benefits that came with owning a small business, the couple dreamed...

You've been asking what we've got planed for 2024 —  so here's a sneak peak! I'm calling this episode our "Winter Housekeeping" pod so if you’re just here for the guests I bring onto the show and don’t care too much about what we’re building at Sponstayneous or the community we’re cultivating through Behind the Stays, I am not offended, just ignore these episodes when they pop-up into your feed. B...

Meet Jake Pontius — Co-Founder of Nook , a collection of North America’s most remarkable landscape hotels and outdoor accommodations.  After working as a business analyst at a timeshare company, Jake left the corporate world to pursue his passion of brewing craft beer and it was during this season of his life where he first fell in love with hospitality. Now while Jake fell in love with the indust...

Meet Margot Schmorak, Co-Founder and CEO of Hostfully — one of the hospitality industry’s leading technology companies.  Margot started her career working in marketing at Apple during one of the company's most pivotal eras.  She remembers the launch of the very first iPhone quite vividly since she was the only person on the marketing team to NOT receive a phone since she was just an intern at the...