How Ronival doubled their inventory, expanded into new territory and scaled smartly in 18 months
Growing Into A Luxury Vacation Rental Property Management Company
Ronival Real Estate was founded in Cabo in 2010 by Nick Fong and Rocio Montaño. Very soon, the need for someone that would take care professionally of the foreign residents and investor’s homes gave place to Ronival Property Management. In 2015 they began offering short-term rentals to guests exclusively in Los Cabos, Mexico.
Thanks to their focus on high quality service and detail orientation, the Property Management business took off, growing from 8 to 31 vacation rental properties in less than two years, and to almost 100 properties in total. Today, Rocio and her team manage a wide variety of vacation rentals across the Baja Peninsula in Mexico.
The Challenge
As Ronival grew, the company experienced common pain points associated with scaling rapidly in a short amount of time.
Rocio and her team spent most of their days managing operations, from coordinating with cleaning staff, responding to guest inquiries, and managing relationships with owners. This meant little time to focus on business relations and adding more listings to the portfolio.
Moreover, most of Ronival’s operations management and guest communication was handled manually – often by email and not from one centralized location, which made growth difficult.
“We knew we needed to start looking for a system that would allow us to manage our operations more efficiently. We had the goal of scaling, but having the hassle of managing so many different factors across multiple properties was not giving us much time for this,” said Barbie, Ronival’s Business Development & Vacation Rental Manager
The Solution
In 2019, Rocio happened upon Guesty by chance, aftering seeing an ad on Facebook that grabbed her attention. After doing additional research, Rocio and her team quickly came to the decision that Guesty was the best property management software available on the market.
“Guesty really caught our eyes with the large choice of features it offered” said Rocio. Automated messaging has been a game-changer for the Ronival team. “I can’t live without it! The saved replies and automated messages are changing our lives!” she added.
In addition, Guesty’s Yield Management tools allow Ronival to manage prices in an automated and intuitive manner, alongside the Multi-Calendar where they can see all listings at a glance. And the Check-In Form has been incredibly useful in terms of collecting guest information (such as passport details and special requests) that would have normally required a lot of manual work.
In addition, Ronival has been able to increase occupancy and drive bookings using Send a Quote, which lets the team send tailored quotes to potential guests, enticing them to book while blocking the dates at the same time.
“Ultimately, all of these tools ensure that things don’t fall through the cracks,” said Barbie.
The Results
Since partnering with Guesty 18 months ago, Ronival has doubled its inventory – despite a global pandemic – and continues to grow, expanding into new cities in the Baja region, including Cabo San Lucas, San José del Cabo, Loreto, and La Paz.
“Not only does Guesty allow us to organize our processes, but the software enables our growth. We are planning to grow by another third of our current inventory next year (20 more properties) and expand into new regions, something we would not be able to achieve without Guesty,” said Rocio, “In short, Guesty has been a blessing for us and we are so thankful for the work and the improvements they are constantly bringing. It gets better every day!”
