Posted on 4/25/2024 by Emily Shone

The Affect of a High Performance Team on Vacation Rental Management



I’ve been fortunate in my career both with Property Valet and in other roles that I’ve served in previously with other companies, to be in leadership positions. It’s something that I enjoy, take great honour in, and feel a great responsibility for. Throughout my work journey, I have had many great mentors - many thanks Norm, Miles, my Dad to name a few. These mentors have laid the foundation for what my leadership style is today and I always strive to carry forward their best traits. I frequently run into situations where I utilize previous experience and lessons from those mentors and often find myself asking “What would Norm do, or how would my Dad handle this?”. A quick piece of unsolicited advice for anyone wanting to start a business is to find a company with good leaders (in an industry you like) and work your ass off following opportunities to work alongside them.

I believe being a leader is a commitment to stewardship, that requires support and motivation as much as direction and management. I find great reward in leading teams and I’m very passionate about the professional development of others. People work for people, not businesses; Miles Brown would always remind me. I try to keep that concept at the forefront of my mind day to day.

Being on the front end of hiring a new team member can be stressful, risky, and challenging at times but more than anything, exciting. I love the hope and promise a new hire can breathe into a business, and the positive nature of offering a new career path to a person and a new addition to the team. If you are lucky enough to attract good people, earn their trust to work with them on their development, promote and maintain a positive culture, you may just end up with an entire team of high performers. Together, you can create an environment that will benefit all areas of your business and create value your competitors cannot rival. I’m a firm believer that it’s the responsibility of leaders to ensure your business keeps up with the latest technology and infuses that into your service offering, but I believe more than anything that you are only as good as the team and the people you have. As robots and AI emerge into our workplace, the value of good humans will only rise!


At PV, our team is a great differentiator for our business in our industry. We have the best team, hands down, full stop. I would put our team against any other in our industry in any region, any day of the week. When you invest heavily in a team, you can do the most good for your clients - it’s really as simple as that. Being client-facing and often taking care of business development affords me the opportunity to speak frequently with investment homeowners that seek us out because they are not happy with the service they are getting from one of our competitors. Some of the things I hear most often are:


  • I can never get a hold of anyone to talk about my condo or chalet
  • I showed up at my place and the cleaning was really bad, it looked like no care was taken with my home
  • When we arrived, we discovered a lot of damage that we had not been notified of
  • I’m not happy with my bookings and my neighbours are all doing better
  • The linens I had purchased were all gone and there was a mixed-matched collection that was old and poor quality
  • Amenities from our home were missing without explanation
  • My owner statements and payouts often come late and the timing is inconsistent
  • My company doesn’t respond to the negative reviews and they are all related to communication

Running a successful vacation rental management operation is not easy. Too many companies try to grow and do it all themselves, taking on more than they can handle. You cannot respond to clients if you’re putting out fires related to cleaning or chasing guests for missing items. You will forget to properly submit a damage claim if you’re busy manually doing your month end reconciliation yourself for your owners. How can you monitor and adjust your dynamic pricing weekly if you’re running around like a chicken with your head cut off? I see it all too often in an industry that focuses on how nice your website is, and the quality of your Instagram account. Those things are essential, but it’s your team that handles the meat and potatoes of successful operations and that’s what our guests and our clients are really paying for. The PV Team has high performing people that are passionate about their work and extremely dedicated to their role in each area of our business that aligns with the core requirements of the industry. We also have two bricks and mortar offices and processes and cadences that support continuous improvement of our operations, but more importantly, our team.

Drop us a line here if you want to join our team, work with us on your investment, or stay at one of our rentals managed by our team. We are always ready to grow and build the PV Team!

- PJ Slade

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