Two homes. One idea.
Make it genuinely great.
Thirty years in software. Ten of those as a property investor on the side. Then a short term rental side hustle that grew into something worth betting everything on.
It started as a side hustle,
It didn’t stay one.
I spent thirty years on the software side of IT, and the last ten as a property investor alongside it. The spark came from a chance conversation with a friend who’d been in short-term rentals for a couple of years and that was all it took. Three years ago I started something smaller, one house, no plan to leave the day job. That house was Teemos Retreat.
Teemos Retreat.
A place I’d actually want to stay.
We wanted a property specifically for Airbnb, so for three months I drove from Auckland to Rotorua most weekends. Open home after open home, 21 in a single weekend at the record.
We found the one that needed work. Eight weeks of renovation later, Teemos Retreat opened, the kind of place I’d actually want to stay at. It worked and I was hooked.
Cresta Vista. We set a launch date
before we had a house to move to..
Cresta Vista had been our family home for three and a half years. Turning it into a stay meant moving out, I locked in a launch date before we’d even found where we’d go. We found a place just six weeks before go-live.
Twelve months of preparation, procurement and setup came before that. Cresta Vista Retreat opened its doors the following month, November 2025. It worked and worked very well...
Then I went all in.
Cresta Vista very quickly started to prove itself, and being at a point in my career that I needed a break. I took a risk and I left the comfort of my corporate job to focus fully on Mandevilla Stays. With a focus on creating exceptional places to stay, and exceptional experiences for the people who stay in them.
Falling back on 30 years of experience...understanding technology, building things, solving problems, leading and managing people...I backed myself to apply these skills in different ways.
I genuinely love hosting and I want other hosts/property owners to get this right also.