Welcome to Short-Term Rental Riches. We'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short-term rentals, quick actionable items to acquire, manage, and scale your portfolio. I'm your host Tim Hubbard, way back in March of 2023. I recorded an episode titled. Why virtual management is the future of all property management. Here we are years later. I not only still believe that that's true and it's more clear and evident than ever, but I'm also more passionate about it than I've ever been before. But it's not just me that's passionate about it. I'm excited to have our guest on today, Justin Winfield, who has a fascinating real estate background. He is owned property in China. He owns a property in Vancouver that's been hosted on
TV shows and he also built an 11 story boutique hotel in Met in Columbia, where we met years and years ago. I'm also really excited to call Justin my partner because we have joined forces. He shares that passion and vision just as I do, and we both truly believe that virtual management is the future of all property management. So I'm excited to jump into the details with him today. Talk a little bit about his backstory, how we came to be where we are today, and provide a little bit of insight for all of you out there. Welcome to the show, Justin. Thanks, Tim. It's great to be part of the team and it's an exciting future ahead. Definitely. Justin and I have actually known each other for a really long time, like seven or eight years. We met in Meine Columbia years and years ago, but it seems like the more I get to know Justin, the more I find out about him just as a truly fascinating story. So Justin, why don't you give us some background and
how you got to be where we are today. So I'm a Canadian living down here in Meine, Columbia. My journey is a little bit varied. I was a management consultant for quite a long time in the two thousands, uh, a little bit past 2010. And during that period, a side thing that I was doing was investing in property in China in the mid two thousands. And it was sort of a random way that I got there, but that did really, really well. We all heard about the Chinese economic miracle and boom and those things, so I was very fortunate to identify that early and I bought a few apartments there. And then around 2009 I sold those 'cause the stock market had crashed. Basically everything was on sale, 60% off. So I've sold everything, got into the stock market and then that, that rebounded really well. And because I was living all over the world, I left Canada over 20 years ago. But often in consulting engagements, you're there at a client site for six months or nine months or a year or something
like that. So I was staying a lot in corporate furnished departments. Yes. I actually once lived in a Four Seasons for over a year, but it's so much better living in apartments like a home, but corporate furnished apartments, never really had a great vibe. So Airbnb came along and I was like, wow, this is incredible. It feels like home. And this was the early days of Airbnb and because I was also going back to Canada more frequently, Vancouver, where my parents are, and then I bought an apartment in Vancouver. It's not any kind of like a billionaire penthouse or anything. It's just 22nd floor of a 30 floor tower. But I did it up the way that I wanted it, opened it up, great views, Vancouver's beautiful, and put it on IRB, and did it really, really well. And then all of these companies were booking it for marketing campaigns. Then Netflix shot part of a series in it, one season of that series. Anyway, so I learned a couple other apartments and they did really well in Airbnb too. So I kind of came at it from a design
point. But when I got to Metje, I did an apartment down here and I always wanted to build a building. I always thought that the best of all worlds, Jay-Z, he doesn't stay in Airbnbs, but neither does he stay in little apartments, you know, in little hotel rooms. He stays in like VIP type suites. So that was kind of my concept for the hotel that I built called Nito Sky. Here in Meine was beautiful, full-size apartments, but with private elevator access and 24 7 reception and the rooftop and so forth. So it was a little bit like Airbnb apartments, but within a hotel wrapper and trying to go more for like the higher end design side. And that's just done really, really well. But of course what happened with Meine is that the city blew up in from a tourism perspective. What we saw back in 2015, which is about when we first started coming into Meine living there, everybody else was discovered over the last five years. So now there's literally millions and millions of tourist arrivals, which has been amazing for the city's economy
and for folks that have Airbnbs and hotels. But it inevitably, capitalism being capitalism, all these new hotels flooded in, and then over the last 18 months. A lot of the hotels, our revenues are coming down because even though there's a lot more demand, there's way more supply. Like there's dozens of new hotels opening every year. That brought me to you and ultimately what's become cosley, because I was like, geez, the good times, you know where you're growing 30, 40% revenue a year kind of over. Actually there started to become revenue declines, and it was great when I went down in Brazil and you sat me down and you showed me price labs and basically gave me a crash course in dynamic pricing and optimized pricing. And then that made me think about all of the ways that listings really attract attention, particularly hotels, and really think deeply about that using that management consulting background. So that kind of got us on this whole journey of discovery on marketing science.
How do you get listings that pop?