Welcome to Behind the Stays — a podcast that shares the stories behind your favorite boutique hotels, short-term rentals, and hospitality brands and the hosts, operators, and entrepreneurs who’ve brought them to life. Every Tuesday and Friday you’ll meet the military veterans, retired flight attendants, tech entrepreneurs, school teachers, single moms, hoteliers, and real estate investors who are all, in their unique ways, shaping the future of travel and hospitality. Discover how these visionaries — from all over the world — have built stunning landscape hotels in the mountains, designed bohemian bungalows on the beach, erected eclectic off-grid and nature-immersed escapes, and so much more. Behind the Stays is brought to you by Journey — a first-of-its-kind loyalty program that brings together an alliance of the world’s top independently owned and operated stays and allows travelers to earn points and perks on boutique hotels, vacation rentals, treehouses, ski chalets, glamping experiences and so much more. Behind the States is hosted by Zach Busekrus, Head of the Journey Alliance.
Episodes
Friday May 19, 2023
Friday May 19, 2023
Meet Hayden Laverty, Founder of CHJ Development, a real-estate developer in Portland, Oregon focused on acquiring, designing, and constructing the city’s most significant short-term-rental residences.
Hayden learned pretty early on in life that he wasn’t cut out for the traditional 9 - 5.
After working at two internships during his junior and senior years of college at Intel and Price Water Cooper, Hayden realized that he loved working hard, pushing the envelope of convention, and didn’t have much patience for bureaucratic friction.
So, after graduating from Arizona State University, Hayden decided to shoot his shot by starting his own business.
Connect with Hayden on LinkedIn
In this episode of Behind the Stays, Hayden shares:
1. The story behind the opportunity he saw in the short-term rental real estate development and management game
2. How he’s scaled his business to over 200 units under management
3. Why he thinks OTAs like Airbnb should charge hots more
4. What he’s learned as a young entrepreneur about the importance of focus, grit, and differentiation.
This episode is brought to you by DEN Outdoors.
You’ve seen them all over Instagram…
You may have also seen them in Dwell Magazine….
And if you love design, travel, and hospitality, chances are you’ve even dreamed about what it would be like to build your very own A-Frames, Cabins, or Barnhouse with their designs.
DEN Outdoors began because its founders knew that building a cabin changes who you are, having a cabin changes how you live, and sharing a cabin changes how you engage with others.
I’ve met so many incredible hosts in the short-term-rental community who have used DEN designs to build their bespoke escapes, many of whom have been guests on this podcast.
And now, it brings me SO much joy to announce that we’ve partnered with DEN to bring you an exclusive discount on their digital design plans.
By using the discount code SPONSTAY50 at checkout, you can get ANY of DEN’s digital plans for 50% off…that’s right…5-0.
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.
Thursday May 18, 2023
Thursday May 18, 2023
Download the full free report . Oh, and be sure to start your 14-day free trial of Uplisting at at https://www.uplisting.io/bts-podcast and, once you’ve fallen in love with all that this platform has to offer, get 20% off of your first year of Uplisting when you use the code BTS20 at checkout.
Welcome to Episode 2 of a special 3-part podcast series on The State of the Short-Term Rental Industry brought to you by my friends at Uplisting — one of the most powerful property management systems on the market.
In this episode, Zach and Vinny chat about how much money you can actually make from short-term rentals based on new data uncovered by the aforementioned report.
About the series
Airbnb hosts and short-term rental operators often work independently without much intel as to how their peers are marketing their properties, increasing their booking rates, and how much money folks are actually making from their portfolios.
In order to address this issue, the Uplisting team took it upon themselves to collect and analyze data from their own customers as well as hundreds of other STR owners and operators in the industry.
This special podcast series will unveil some of the more interesting findings from this report and equip you with insight into how your business compares to others.
This episode and 3-part series is brought you to by Uplisting.
Whether you have a single property or hundreds of properties, Uplisting is designed to help you accelerate growth with incredible reliability, critical marketing automation and the most powerful direct booking engine on the market.
Start your 14-day free trial at uplisting.io/bts-podcast and, once you’ve fallen in love with all that this platform has to offer, get 20% off of your first year of Uplisting when you use the code BTS20 at checkout — but act fast, because this offer expires on June 30th, 2023 at midnight!
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.
Tuesday May 16, 2023
Tuesday May 16, 2023
Meet Robin Craigen, Co-Founder and CEO of Moving Mountains —a luxury collection of lodging properties in Steamboat Springs, Beaver Creek, Vail, and Breckenridge, Colorado.
Robin began his hospitality entrepreneurship journey alongside his wife Heather at sea. Yes, you heard that right, the Craigens ran a luxury yacht charter business around the British Virgin Islands.
And while sailing the stunning waters of the BVI was nothing short of a dream, Robin and Heather had higher aspirations. The couple moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and decided to open up a ski chalet business.
And that business? Well they called it Moving Mountains and today, they manage more than 200 properties across in Colorado’s most desirable ski towns.
In this conversation, Robin shares:
- His musings on the current state of the vacation rental industry
- His thoughts on how to best leverage OTAs
- How he’s scaled a team to manage 200+ properties with the kind of service and attention to detail of a 5-start resort
- Why he thinks Moving Mountains generates so many returning guests
- How he’s thinking about growing in other vacation destinations with his soon-to-be-launched sub-brands Moving Beaches and Moving Oceans.
Book your stay at a Moving Mountains property.
Connect with Robin on LinkedIn.
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Minoan.
If you have more than one short-term-rental, chances are you use a system for your property management — something like Guesty or Uplisting.
Well, Minoan is a TOTALLY FREE system that hosts use for furnishing and refreshing their homes.
Minoan provides hosts with a one-stop-shop to get hundreds of discounts on the world’s leading brands, and a system where you can manage all of the ordering, tracking, returns, etc. in one place. Saving you time and money!
Create your free account here and be sure to tell the team that Zach from Behind the Stays sent you there way!
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.
Wednesday May 10, 2023
Wednesday May 10, 2023
Download the full free report . Oh, and be sure to start your 14-day free trial of Uplisting at at https://www.uplisting.io/bts-podcast and, once you’ve fallen in love with all that this platform has to offer, get 20% off of your first year of Uplisting when you use the code BTS20 at checkout.
Welcome to a special 3-part podcast series on The State of the Short-Term Rental Industry brought to you by my friends at Uplisting — one of the most powerful property management systems on the market.
Over the next three weeks, join Vinny Breslin, Co-Founder and CEO of Uplisitng, and yours truly, Zach Busekrus from Behind the Stays, as we unpack Uplisting’s latest trends report .
Airbnb hosts and short-term rental operators often work independently without much intel as to how their peers are marketing their properties, increasing their booking rates, and how much money folks are actually making from their portfolios.
In order to address this issue, the Uplisting team took it upon themselves to collect and analyze data from their own customers as well as hundreds of other STR owners and operators in the industry.
This special podcast series will unveil some of the more interesting findings from this report and equip you with insight into how your business compares to others.
Uplisting invites you to download the full, free report via the link in the show notes below.
Alright folks, without further ado, grab a cup of coffee or your favorite evening cocktail and settle in for an informative and timely 3-part conversation.
This episode and 3-part series is brought you to by Uplisting.
Whether you have a single property or hundreds of properties, Uplisting is designed to help you accelerate growth with incredible reliability, critical marketing automation and the most powerful direct booking engine on the market.
Start your 14-day free trial at uplisting.io/bts-podcast and, once you’ve fallen in love with all that this platform has to offer, get 20% off of your first year of Uplisting when you use the code BTS20 at checkout — but act fast, because this offer expires on June 30th, 2023 at midnight!
Tuesday May 09, 2023
Tuesday May 09, 2023
Meer Eric Moeller, Founder + CEO of Freewyld — a curated collection of properties designed to inspire awe and bring people together launching this summer in Idyllwild, California.
Eric is no stranger to hospitality entrepreneurship. He is the co-founder of Overnight Success which is the engine behind short-term rental educational brands like Legends X 90-Day STR Accelerator, STR Legends Mastermind, Get Paid For Your Pad, and the Airbnb Profit Club.
Eric was also the co-founder and CEO of Koda Homes — a real estate investment, management and professional tenant company in San Diego.
In this lively conversation, Eric and I chat about the major opportunities that exist in the boutique hospitality space right now, why impeccable design is table stakes when it comes to short-term rentals today, the challenges of building membership programs as a highly-curated collection of stays, and much more.
This episode is brought to you by DEN Outdoors.
You’ve seen them all over Instagram…
You may have also seen them in Dwell Magazine….
And if you love design, travel, and hospitality, chances are you’ve even dreamed about what it would be like to build your very own A-Frames, Cabins, or Barnhouse with their designs.
DEN Outdoors began because its founders knew that building a cabin changes who you are, having a cabin changes how you live, and sharing a cabin changes how you engage with others.
I’ve met so many incredible hosts in the short-term-rental community who have used DEN designs to build their bespoke escapes, many of whom have been guests on this podcast.
And now, it brings me SO much joy to announce that we’ve partnered with DEN to bring you an exclusive discount on their digital design plans.
By using the discount code SPONSTAY50 at checkout, you can get ANY of DEN’s digital plans for 50% off…that’s right…5-0.
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.
Friday May 05, 2023
Friday May 05, 2023
Meet Amy Dourson from Red River Gorgeous, a collection of unique cabins, treehouses, and instagram-famous cliff houses in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge.
Growing up, Amy wanted to be a doctor. So, she spent a lot of her time studying as she was determined to go to medical school.
But, after a series of adventurous and serendipitous events, Amy fell in love with carpentry and decided to exchange her dreams of becoming a doctor with a new dream to become a builder.
When Amy met her husband Aaron, his family owned a few cabins in the Nada Tunnel Road in the heart of the gorge. The business — if you could call it that — was hanging on by little more than a wing and a prayer.
As Amy saw it, the couple had two options — let the family business run its course or adopt a new vision of building a collection of unique stays that would introduce the world to the geological wonders of the Gorge that she had fallen in love with.
The couple chose the latter.
Tune in to hear how Amy transformed a side-hustle family business into a thriving hospitality brand, how she’s strategically partnered with folks like Canopy Crew to build one-of-a-kind treehouses, how she’s built the right team to support the company’s growth, and her vision for the future of travel and hospitality.
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Minoan.
If you have more than one short-term-rental, chances are you use a system for your property management — something like Guesty or Uplisting.
Well, Minoan is a TOTALLY FREE system that hosts use for furnishing and refreshing their homes.
Minoan provides hosts with a one-stop-shop to get hundreds of discounts on the world’s leading brands, and a system where you can manage all of the ordering, tracking, returns, etc. in one place. Saving you time and money!
Create your free account here and be sure to tell the team that Zach from Behind the Stays sent you there way!
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.
Tuesday May 02, 2023
Tuesday May 02, 2023
Meet Ben Wolff — Founder and Creator of Onera — a truly one-of-a-kind collection of unique escapes in the Texas Hill Country.
Ben is no stranger to hospitality entrepreneurship. Prior to starting Onera, Ben founded and grew ProTripper, a property management services platform, and Blink Hospitality, a data-driven, vacation rental company with hundreds of properties across the US.
But then something happened in early March 2020 that changed everything. Ben was overseas celebrating the prior year’s successes with a team he had built in the Philippines when his phone began vibrating uncontrollably. Guests were canceling their stays as news broke that the WHO had announced that COVID-19 was now a pandemic.
And while COVID crushed Ben’s core business, which primarily focused on STRs in urban locations, it inspired him to think bigger, bolder, and more creatively than ever before.
Tune in to hear the story behind how this set of seemingly-doomsday day events led to the creation of an innovative hospitality company offering luxury, eco-focused, unique stays in beautiful, natural landscapes.
Follow Ben on Twitter
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Minoan.
If you have more than one short-term-rental, chances are you use a system for your property management — something like Guesty or Uplisting.
Well, Minoan is a TOTALLY FREE system that hosts use for furnishing and refreshing their homes.
Minoan provides hosts with a one-stop-shop to get hundreds of discounts on the world’s leading brands, and a system where you can manage all of the ordering, tracking, returns, etc. in one place. Saving you time and money!
Create your free account here and be sure to tell the team that Zach from Behind the Stays sent you there way!
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.
Friday Apr 28, 2023
Friday Apr 28, 2023
Meet Chelsea Dunckley — the Founder of Digs Co, a hospitality company that specializes in creating elevated vacation rentals in Central Washington and the Greater Phoenix area.
Chelsea and her husband Luke have always loved real estate. After getting married, you’d often find the couple working on nights and weekends flipping homes while discussing the latest trends in design, real estate, and hospitality.
But it wasn’t until Chelsea received some unexpected news from the tech company she worked at that she and her entire unit were to be let go that she decided to try her hand at transforming Digs Co from a fun side hustle into her full time gig.
In this conversation, Chelsea and I discuss the power and importance of brand building, why Chelsea is so discerning about the properties she chooses to manage for clients within the context of the Digs Co. brand, how and why she’s structured her portfolio into thematic collections, and much more.
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Minoan.
If you have more than one short-term-rental, chances are you use a system for your property management — something like Guesty or Uplisting.
Well, Minoan is a TOTALLY FREE system that hosts use for furnishing and refreshing their homes.
Minoan provides hosts with a one-stop-shop to get hundreds of discounts on the world’s leading brands, and a system where you can manage all of the ordering, tracking, returns, etc. in one place. Saving you time and money!
Create your free account here and be sure to tell the team that Zach from Behind the Stays sent you there way!
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.
Thursday Apr 27, 2023
Thursday Apr 27, 2023
In this special episode, Zach sits down with Amy from Allbelongco to discuss the viral story behind her missing painting. One of Amy's recent Airbnb guests stole a painting and then REPLACED it with one of his own.
Amy posted about this on Instagram and TikTok...and it went viral! Tune into the riveting, somewhat unbelievable story behind this mystery unfolding (in real time) in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Follow Allbelongco on Instagram.
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Minoan.
If you have more than one short-term-rental, chances are you use a system for your property management — something like Guesty or Uplisting.
Well, Minoan is a TOTALLY FREE system that hosts use for furnishing and refreshing their homes.
Minoan provides hosts with a one-stop-shop to get hundreds of discounts on the world’s leading brands, and a system where you can manage all of the ordering, tracking, returns, etc. in one place. Saving you time and money!
Create your free account here and be sure to tell the team that Zach from Behind the Stays sent you there way!
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Tuesday Apr 25, 2023
Meet Jacob Halverson, the General Manager of Mendocino Grove — a luxury glamping resort on 32 wooded acres in Mendocino County, California.
After studying hospitality management at Lakeland University, Jacob started his career as a front desk manager at Custer State Park Resort in South Dakota. Since then, he’s helped launch luxury boutique hotels, started his own hospitality consultancy, and, currently, serves as the General Manager at Mendocino Grove.
In this lively conversation, Jacob and I discuss the massive opportunity that exists in the luxe camping space, how to increase revenue and profitability when you’ve reached the ceiling for your nightly rate, and the future of experiential travel.
This episode is brought to you by our friends at Minoan.
If you have more than one short-term-rental, chances are you use a system for your property management — something like Guesty or Uplisting.
Well, Minoan is a TOTALLY FREE system that hosts use for furnishing and refreshing their homes.
Minoan provides hosts with a one-stop-shop to get hundreds of discounts on the world’s leading brands, and a system where you can manage all of the ordering, tracking, returns, etc. in one place. Saving you time and money!
Create your free account here and be sure to tell the team that Zach from Behind the Stays sent you there way!
About the Show
Behind the Stays is brought to you twice a week by Sponstayneous — a free, biweekly newsletter that brings subscribers the best last-minute deals and upcoming steals on Airbnb.
You can subscribe, for free, at www.sponstayneous.com.
Behind the Stays is hosted by Zach Busekrus, co-founder of Sponstayneous, you can connect with him on Twitter at @zboozee.