How this hip New Orleans short-term rental management company grew its listings by 166% in just one year
Turning Fun Into Opportunity
New Orleans had always been Jordan Jacobs’s destination of choice. The city’s rich history, diverse culture, and vibrant music scene drew Jacobs back to it time and time again until he finally decided to make it his home. In 2016, he bought a house in New Orleans’ famed Marigny Triangle that he would rent out on Airbnb.
As he witnessed the constant demand for his listing, Jacobs quickly realized the incredible potential of the short-term rental market in New Orleans and started managing more and more properties. Recounting those early days, Jacobs says: “Before I knew it, I had 30 units that I was managing, and things were just really going very well. I started hiring people to help me, and things just started growing.” And so, Marigny Management was born.
Today, Marigny’s energetic team of five full-time employees—which is committed to “providing short-term rentals owners with excellent investment opportunities”—manages 80 listings in New Orleans and plans to expand its footprint across the city over the coming year by acquiring new properties.
The Challenge
Up until COVID-19 struck, Marigny Management posted its listings on a single major OTA. As the pandemic brought with it a wave of cancelations through this one platform, Marigny saw $350,000 worth of bookings evaporate overnight and a depleted calendar with “no end in sight,” leading them to let go of 20 properties to cut losses. At this stage, it dawned on Jacobs that his property management company was over-exposed to a single OTA and entirely reliant on it for 100% of its reservations.
“At that point, we realized that we can’t rely on a single OTA,” said Jacobs. We needed a service like Guesty that’s going to allow us to be on other websites. A service that would enable us to spread that risk across multiple sites and hopefully deliver better outcomes for us.”
The Solution
Jacobs explored solutions that could help him and his team expand their listings to other OTAs while staying lean and efficient. Guesty proved to be precisely what Jacobs was looking for; a one-stop-shop that would solve Marigny’s over-reliance on a single OTA, as well as a host of other challenges they haven’t even considered yet.
“Guesty had a really great website and interface, and it seemed like it was a one-stop-shop that could take care of a bunch of different things for me all in one place. I thought it could solve both problems that I knew I had, and problems that I didn’t yet know that I had.”
Soon, Marigny was using Guesty for much more than its Channel Manager, Multi-Calendar, and Unified Inbox. According to Jacobs, Guesty’s Revenue Management features were nothing short of transformative for his business, saying, “Having all the pricing algorithms in one place has really enabled us to dial in our pricing strategy. It’s hard to even think about how I was doing pricing before because it just seemed so amateur compared to the pricing strategies that I’m able to conduct with Guesty.”
In addition to all of the above features, since deploying Guesty, Marigny Management has been making full use of Guesty’s Reporting feature to access information and analytics that were previously hidden to them, its Task Management tools to fully automate and streamline their cleaning operations, and 24/7 Guest Communication Service to handle the majority of their digital guest interactions. “It’s great to know that guests are always getting an answer even if I can’t respond. I just always know that GCS (Guest Communication Service) is going to come in and give our guests the answers they need.”
The Results
Since deploying Guesty grew its listings by a staggering 166% to reach 80 total properties by 2021. “We’re almost two and a half, three times bigger than we were when we started with Guesty about a year and a half ago,” says Jacobs of this remarkable transformation.
In July 2021, Marigny saw its biggest revenue month of all time, raking in $250,000, exceeding February 2020’s Mardi Gras month, and setting a new revenue standard for all following months.
Marigny Management hasn’t only increased its listings since using Guesty but has doubled its headcount from two full-time employees at the onset of COVID to five and is looking to hire at least two more by year’s end. However, Jacob says that without Guesty, Marigny would need to hire at least two more full-time employees, especially with the number of guest messages Marigny is answering these days. Jacobs says that using Guesty’s 24/7 Guest Communication tool to handle these queries saves his company 40 hours a week.
From abruptly losing $350,000 at the height of the pandemic to making $250,000 a month since using Guesty, Marigny Management’s story in many ways reflects the spirit of New Orleans. With grit, determination, and the right tools in place, Marigny turned a challenging situation into an opportunity for growth, and this party is just getting started.
