EMERALD STAY: A STORY, A FOCUS, A DRIVING VISION

Maxime Friess, CEO, and Laurent Lacourt, Chief Operating Officer, co-founded Emerald Stay in Geneva, Switzerland, at the end of 2017. With them, we dive into the behind-the-scenes of the company, uncover its raison d'être and core values, and explore its current standing as well as future ambitions.

1- To start, could you each tell us a bit about yourselves? Where are you from, and what has your journey been like, leading up to the founding of Emerald Stay?

Laurent: One of our strengths is the complementarity of our skills and experiences. On my side, I have a background in hospitality management and technology. I initially trained as a chef at the Ecole H?telière de Toulouse. I evolved to management positions within international groups (Hilton, Kempinski) and ended up pursuing a MBA in hospitality management at top-ranked ESSEC Business School (where I first met Max).

The big break in my career was when I was invited to join the founding team of a then young tech startup, LaFourchette (The Fork), to scale the operations across Switzerland and Belgium. I left when it got acquired by Tripadvisor, and after a brief stint for another startup I met Max again and we started working on what later became Emerald Stay. I’ve been fortunate to be able to draw on my experience in scaling hospitality operations and teams, and delivering a superior user experience with the use of digital and technology tools.?

Maxime: On my side I have a mixed background in hospitality, finance and real estate. I grew up in a hotelier family in a Swiss ski resort (Grindelwald), spending almost every day of my first 15 years in a hotel lobby surrounded by guests (or in the kitchen since my dad was a chef). After pursuing a MBA at ESSEC Business School in Paris, I spent the next 7 years in investment banking and commodities trading, working for large international finance institutions in commercial positions in Singapore and Geneva. At Emerald Stay, I’ve been dealing mostly with finance related aspects, from fundraisings to structuring to mergers & acquisitions.

As Laurent says, these complementary skill sets really are a strength - and not only because we’ve never had to fight over who deals with which aspect of the business! Having such an initial wide variety of skills, which we enriched by senior talent as we grew, ended up being a key differentiator in the marketplace.

2- What is Emerald Stay, and how did the idea for it come about? Where did the inspiration originate?

Maxime: Emerald Stay was born on the back of a first entrepreneurial venture which we were developing with two other business partners. This venture involved developing premium chalets in the Alps to accommodate the demand for professionally managed vacation rentals especially in the premium segment. As we were looking for operators to take the operations off our plates, we couldn’t find what we were looking for. On one hand you either had websites or online platforms that would list the property, but not dealing with on-the-ground operations, which is time-consuming and yet key to the delivery of the guest experience. On the other hand, you had local property managers, who did have the boots on the ground, but were much less versed in all digital and online things. We can add to this traditional players like tour operators who were operating with 30 year old business models that hadn’t really evolved.

We created Emerald Stay to fill this gap, taking the best ingredients from different worlds: quality standards with top notch service like the best hotel brands, the heart and soul of chalets, villas & apartments, a superior digital experience - and an asset management-like mentality to serve high net worth homeowner’s demand for financial performance and professional management.??

3- As founding partners, what motivates you and drives you to continually push this entrepreneurial project forward?

Today, we find ourselves in the very privileged position of being able to host guests from all over the world, served by team members who are empowered to give the best of themselves, while being supported by world-class investors who share our vision and give us the resources to execute towards it. Add to this the fact of having survived Covid19, which was a real test of resilience and survivorship. What more could we ask for??

Travel is changing. We are seeking more local, sustainable alternatives, yet demand for quality and service is going through the roof, and we travel more and more in small groups of friends, families or coworkers. This is true for any segment, but especially in the premium and luxury segment. This fuels demand for professionally managed vacation rentals. We find ourselves riding a wave that gets bigger and bigger, which incites us to give the best of ourselves to capture the opportunities ahead, exhausting our talents, trying to become better human beings in the process, and rallying our team members, partners, homeowners and communities along.?

4- What is the company's mission, and what do you believe is essential to achieving it?

Laurent: To keep the analogy of riding a wave, our biggest challenge is to keep striking the balance between power and control, whilst enjoying the sunrise in the process! We are now in a scale-up phase, which involves multiplying our revenue by 2 or 3 every year, putting enormous pressure on our organisation. Thankfully, we spent many years building strong foundations in terms of work culture, technology infrastructure, and operational processes, without which we would have imploded a long time ago. By keeping this balance in mind at all times, we hope to capture opportunities to extend our footprint as widely as possible, while doing good for our team members, partners, and communities.

5- If you had to choose no more than 3 or 4 milestones in the company's history, the key turning points that marked significant changes, what would they be?

1. Covid in March 2020. When we are about to close our seed-funding round and, suddenly, governments tell us that we cannot host guests any longer because of the pandemic. The fight for survival started!?
2. Our first awards, in 2021 and 2022. Not out of vanity, but because it encourages you that you’re on the right track. In 2021, we won the award for Best Global Property Manager, ahead of US-based competitors that had 10x more resources than we did. In 2022, we were the first European rentals operator to become a B-Corp, a testimonial to our commitment to social and climate responsibility. We constantly win awards linked to our work culture and how happy people feel in our group, which is maybe the most important prize of all.
3. M&A growth in 2022. Then we started to grow not only organically but by acquiring existing rental operators and integrating them to our group. I would say that each company we acquire, each deal we close, is like a new milestone for our family. Each new element adds its strengths and weaknesses to the group, changes our dynamics, creates new human interactions with passionate people, and broadens our horizon. It’s challenging, fascinating and we love every bit of it.?

6- Where does the company stand today, and what do you see as its strengths?

Maxime: Today, we are an international group operating in 4 countries, with more than 150 employees during high season, and multiple dozens of millions in revenue. We have developed core competencies that allow us to capture significant growth in our market:?

• World-class vacation rentals management across the premium and luxury segment, from self-catered properties starting at €1 000 per night, all the way to €40 000 per night chalets with 10 dedicated staff.?
• Developing digital and technology tools specific to our needs and that of our guests and homeowners.
• Combining organic growth with external growth, adding existing rental operators to our family and integrating them smartly?developing a strong work culture.

Last but not least, our strength lies in our ability to access funding that is aligned to our vision. In recent years, we’ve witnessed lots of cases of VC fueled “growth at all costs”, which in our industry does not end well. In partnering with Limestone Capital and private family offices, we chose world-class long-term investors who ensure that we can execute towards our vision with high ambition and an approach adapted to our industry.?

7- Finally, in a wild dream, what would Emerald Stay be like in 10 years' time?

A globally recognised brand as strong as Airbnb or Hilton!