Vacasa CEO Reengages a Supply Strategy He Used at OpenTable

For Vacasa CEO Matt Roberts, who had the same title at OpenTable when he sold it to Booking Holdings eight years ago, focusing on adding homes and building income for owners will work as a hedge against Google and other competitors just as adding restaurants, he argued, worked at the dining reservations platform.

Running property management platform Vacasa, which went public in December, amounts to a sort of ground hog day all over again for Roberts. He took the top spot two years ago at Vacasa, replacing founder Eric Breon, who remains a board member.

Roberts told Skift a day after Vacasa reported its first financials last week as a public company — it lost $154 million in 2021 — that the property manager is focusing on building a supply-centric business with the infrastructure to accelerate returns. 

If a property manager is increasing its supply — and Vacasa counts 37,000 in its portfolio — and has exclusive rights to control their calendars, then it is less beholden to the demand side of the business, and the need to look to Goog