Onefinestay CEO: The Vacation Rental Market Is Fragmented and Ripe for Disruption

It's been an eventful year for onefinestay. The eight-year-old company specializing in high-end home rentals in cities such as London, Paris, New York City, Rome, Miami, and Los Angeles, was purchased last spring by AccorHotels for some $168 million. And just five months after that acquisition, former CEO and co-founder Greg Marsh left the company. Now, under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Evan Frank, onefinestay is continuing to work on its goal of expanding to 40 cities in four years, as well as making its own formal entrance into the luxury vacation rental market as well, with Collections. The first Collections homes will be available in the Hamptons, with more than 20 listings, and they will rent for up to $2 million later this year. Eventually, onefinestay will have Collections properties available to rent in Southern California, the French Riviera, and Edinburgh, too. We sat down with Frank in onefinestay's New York City offices on February 10 to talk to him about growth, expansion, why everyone seems to be interested in the luxury vacation rental space, and what's ahead for the alternative accommodations space. Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Skift: So, a lot has happened in the last year. Onefinestay was purchased by AccorHotels, and it's been almost a year now since the acquisition. How have things been going just generally? Evan Frank: Well, look, 2016 was definitely a year of change for onefinestay. A lot changed. When we think about how the year began and how the year ended, it's really been a transformational time in a bunch of ways. It was a good year. Of course, the main event over the course of the year was the acquisition by Accor. The rationale behind the acquisition was, first of all, that it's complementary, not competitive, to the traditional hotel business. They've been pretty vocal about the big bet they're making in private rentals and they saw us as a great brand to add to their portfolio. For us, getting access to their expertise, around how to build a real hotel business and sales and marketing [has been crucial.] They have operations in, I believe, 95 countries. So, there's quite a lot of expertise that they bring to bear that, for a company that was privately owned and venture backed, we didn't really have access to. So, it's been quite educational. Certainly, the hope is that with their footprint we will be able to also reduce our time and cost to new market expans