From Speaking with Tony Robbins to Building Queenstown's #1 AirBNB Business
episode
The Accommodation Show - Hospitality Success Series!
34 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 28 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is Savannah Jackson’s background and how did she transition from stockbroking to short‑term rentals?
Well, hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the accommodation show. This week you're in for an absolute treat because I am joined by the wonderful Savannah Jackson from Hello Queenstown. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Barry. Great to be here. Absolute pleasure to have you. You are in one of the most beautiful places in the world, being Queenstown. If you haven't visited Queenstown, I highly recommend it. I got taken there by my partner a few years ago. We managed to go to Milford Sound, look it up. It's the most stunning thing you could ever do. Get on a plane, get over there, uh, and have a look at it. And uh, Savannah uh has been Running a very, very successful business called Hello Queenstown, which she'll tell you all about.
But um Savannah, before I get going, uh, how are you going?
I'm doing great, thank you. It's a beautiful sunny day here in Queenstown. Can't be better.
Yeah, amazing. Look, uh I might get straight into it because uh our journey has been a little bit serendipitous. Uh I was organizing Strive to Thrive in New Zealand. Our paths cross through mutual connections, and uh now here we are. And the reason why I really wanted to do it is because you are building uh a business at absolute breakneck speed. You have a huge amount of business experience, and I think that everybody can learn an awful lot from your journey, from your story, and really apply it to their businesses. So can you do me a favor and introduce yourself, let everybody know uh who you are, maybe a bit of your background and what uh Hello Queenstown is all about.
Sure, of course. Um, I was born and raised in Canada to a mother from New Zealand. When I was sixteen, she took us to live in Australia. So I spent most of my life living in Australia, despite my Canadian accent. Um I for twenty five years I had a stockbroking education, financial services business, and I was in the very privileged position to speak on stage with people such as Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, Richard Branson, and many others. And through that business I was able to retire when I was about forty five years old and decided to move to live in the most beautiful place on earth, Queenstown, New Zealand. Uh if you've ever watched the Lord of the Rings movies, that's exactly where I live, right down in Middle Earth.
And coming out of the pandemic, I had purchased a number of properties, which I was managing myself on Airbnb, and decided that I turned 50 and I thought, you know, I'm I'm way too young to be fully retired. I need to do something else. I got one more big business in me. And seeing as I was already managing property in Queenstown and I didn't want to be traveling too much for business, I thought, hey, look, why don't we build up the biggest property management company here? You know, as you do. So I only started a couple of years ago and within the two year time period we've actually now grown to 145 properties under management, making us the single largest property management company in Queenstown.
But we're not sitting on our laurels. We're certainly taking the opportunity to continue to grow. Um I've currently got two large um developments underway where I'm building one group of 21 townhouses and another group of 60 townhouses. I'm also working with a number of other developers who are building their own projects and we're negotiating now to take on the management of those projects. So our ultimate goal is to get to about 500 properties under management within the next four to five years. Now, along that road, we've also learnt some of the challenges of running property management and short-term rentals, uh especially when it comes to cleaning. So we used to outsource our cleaning to a couple of different companies.
How did Savannah retire at 45 and decide to start a property‑management business in Queenstown?
Um, but in the end, we found that in order to really succeed in this business, to ensure the quality and the performance of our properties for both the guests and the owners, we had to control the qu the cleaning internally. So now we've built up one of the largest cleaning companies in Queenstown with 35 staff and a fleet of vans to drive around town in.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Savannah Jackson’s background and how did she transition from stockbroking to short‑term rentals?
0:12–3:50
2
How did Savannah retire at 45 and decide to start a property‑management business in Queenstown?
3:50–8:47
3
Why did Hello Queenstown build its own cleaning and linen operations instead of outsourcing?
8:47–15:25
4
What mindset shift helped move the focus from commission to service excellence?
15:25–21:03
5
How did Hello Queenstown scale from 10 to 150 properties in just two years?
21:03–27:32
6
Why is branding the office on Queenstown’s roundabout a game‑changer for growth?
27:32–32:51
7
How did creative lending, syndicates, and community ties enable growth without using personal capital?
32:51–33:43
8
What final advice does Savannah give for entrepreneurs who want to ‘just do it’?
33:43–33:58
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Accommodation Show - Hospitality Success Series!
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