Photo Credit: Rentyl Resorts
Founder and CEO of Rentyl Resorts, Nick Falcone, recently spoke to Haute Living and discussed the origins of his company and how it distinguishes itself in the hospitality industry.
“All over the world, Rentyl Resorts elevates vacations by combining the comforts of home with the top-notch services and amenities of a high-end resort,” said Falcone. “The company is not a timeshare program. There are no points to buy, presentations to watch, and no hoops to jump through. Rentyl Resorts curates homes in or connected to resorts across the globe that meet a standard level of excellence and provide unique experiences and services not found in other rental companies. Homes in the collection include houses, villas, condos, townhomes, and apartments. Rentyl Resorts also partners with top-brand companies in premier destinations.”
Photo Credit: Rentyl Resorts
Haute Living: Could you please explain the background of your business and how Rentyl Resorts began?
Nick Falcone: Before starting the company, my brothers and I started a business 11 years ago and became the founding franchisees of a company called BurgerFi. About four years after launching BurgerFi, my father mentioned over the dinner table that he realized so many home buyers in the Orlando area were exclusively interested in renting out their homes rather than living in them. He suggested to me and my brothers that the short-term rental business might be something on which we could capitalize. The idea stuck in my head so about a week later, I decided to some research and experience what it was like to do a short-term rental. I had never used Airbnb at that point.
While every rental was different, for the most part, every experience was sub-par and unorganized. After conducting this research, this idea became all the more interesting. I figured, ‘well, if this is how the industry is, we could do 10 times better.’
So, three months after that dinner table conversation, I approached my dad and told him I had created an entity and a rental company. Eventually, I moved my entire family up to Orlando, rented a house for a period of time, wrote the business plan, brought in a consultant to help me understand the hospitality market and the rest is history.
Haute Living: Explain what distinguishes Rentyl Resorts.
Nick Falcone: First and foremost, we provide a better way of vacationing in a home. If you look at the market today, you have to go to one of the major distribution channels to rent homes, like Airbnb or Vrbo, you have to play travel agent and look for dozens of homes before finding the right one. And even when you do find the right one, often times it might not appear as it does in the pictures, etc.
With us, you’re coming to Rentyl Resorts and you’re getting a full resort experience with brand standards. Every house will be exactly as it appears and decorated to brand standards. Every house is associated with a resort experience and resort amenities. This means you’ll have full check-in experience, restaurants, pools, spas, you name it. Instead of having to play travel agent and look for all these things in the local ecosystem, it’s all contained in the resort.
You’ll have someone catering to your needs 24/7, making sure you’re safe and that everything goes perfectly during your stay. You get the best of both worlds, where you get all that togetherness under one roof while you’re on vacation.
Photo Credit: Rentyl Resorts
Haute Living: What would you credit for why you were the first to offer homes in a resort setting?
Nick Falcone: I would say the vertical integration. Some companies have positioned themselves as a management company, some have positioned themselves as a distribution channel. No one was really positioned as a brand, like us. The way I differentiate as a brand is that it’s going to help in pre-resort rollout, whether we’re renovating a resort or constructing a brand new one, a brand will lay the standards and foundations to let our team know the way forward.
Being the first to work with a full resort, we knew we had to understand what the developer needs. Once that is settled, we have to have the proper technology. This allows us to take houses and adapt them to go on any distribution channel. That’s important because only 15% of the worldwide travel market has actually booked through distribution channels of homes. While we have plenty of folks with a hospitality background, we have a lot of employees who do not necessarily come from the traditional hotel industry, but come from other aspects of hospitality and are able to take best practices from restaurants or other hospitality business and translate that into a hotel.
Lastly, the fact that we weren’t so big allowed us the privilege of not having to retract a whole bunch. So, for Marriott, Hilton, Airbnb – they’ve all expressed to me that they will never be able to do what we do because they would either have to retract hundreds of millions of dollars of technology spend to go down a different path, or they would have to tell all their franchisees in the hotel side, ‘hey, we’re going into a new business line and we’re going to invest a ton of money marketing this new business line, and it might take away from what we’re able to do for you guys.’
Photo Credit: Rentyl Resorts
Haute Living: What are your goals for the company in the near future?
Nick Falcone: In the near future I want to establish as many locations around the world as possible. I want people to know, when they think of the Rentyl Resorts brand, they’ll be getting a better form of vacationing in a home while still being able to go anywhere you want without being limited to certain markets.
My ultimate goal, in the long term, is that I want to be able to give everyone that’s a disparate inventory player on the Airbnb and Vrbo platforms the ability to match with hotels or residential clubs, so that now, instead of being looked at as a limited-service home, we’re able to attach you with hotels or residential clubs where you’re extending your product into those and you get the resort service amenities. This way, we’re able to provide a better form for those home owners to monetize their unit while providing more inventory for vacationers to take advantage of a resort setting.
