— Cliff Johnson —
I’d like to take a moment to address some concerns about the property management company Vacasa, which were shared in the recent Letter to the Editor published on August 2 (Absentee Owners and Managers Hurt Island Rentals.)
I’m the co-founder of Vacasa, and although it’s true I don’t live locally on Orcas Island, I very much appreciate hearing about how we can better serve our owners, our guests, and the community as a whole. While Vacasa may be larger than most vacation rental management companies, my local team and I truly take these concerns to heart.
Vacasa started in the first place simply because our founder (and now-CEO) Eric wanted to find a better way to share his wife’s family’s summer home in Long Beach, WA with guests as a vacation rental. Together, he and I worked to build Vacasa on the premise that local employees can do what they love most (taking care of guests, homeowners, and properties), while the hands-off tasks of vacation rental management—things like marketing, filing taxes, and maintaining a website—could be handled by a specialized central support team.
Our central support team is based in Portland—and they do a lot of fantastic work—but we know we wouldn’t have found any success without the local housekeepers, property managers, and caretakers that take such amazing care of our homes and our guests. While we may make headlines for our focus on technology, there’s absolutely no substitute for that kind of personal attention and service, and I would never pretend otherwise.
We don’t have a dedicated business development representative on Orcas Island yet, which is why we included the contact information of our Seattle-based sales professional for local homeowners to contact for more information about our services. Still, I believe our local Orcas Island team—including our property manager Lee and our housekeepers Becky and Abigail— deserves to be recognized for their hard work. As a result of their commitment to our guests and our properties, we are proud to share that 100 percent of guests who have reviewed their stays with us on Orcas Island have reported a positive experience overall.
We are committed to building up our local team on Orcas Island as our business grows, and to always being a good citizen and a good neighbor. As much as possible, we aim to be an integral partner in each community by providing great careers for our employees, becoming active members of the Chamber of Commerce, offering annual scholarships to local students, and teaming up with area nonprofit organizations to support their efforts.
If anyone wants to ask questions or share thoughts, my team and I would love to hear from you. Please reach out to info@vacasa.com at any time.
Sure sounds like this is a duplication of a perfectly good business we have right here on the Island (and the references on this business have been pretty negative so far)… Maybe vacations rental are necessary…but let’s not turn the Island into a “rental town”…please….
For those of us who have had the unfortunate (consistent) experience of encountering local business owners that have difficultly behaving with kindness and professionalism, additional options are most welcome. Let the kindest people reign.