• News
    • VRM Intel News
    • Latest News
    • Sponsor News
  • COVID-19
  • Marketing
  • Tech
  • OTAs
  • Customer Service
  • Regulations
  • Business
  • Housekeeping
  • Subscribe
  • More
    • Calendar of Events
    • VRM Intel Live!
    • Reports Login
    • VRM Intel Magazine
    • Advertise
    • Authors
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
VRM Intel
  • News
    • Arizonans for Responsible Tourism Pregame Prep Campaign
      Arizonans for Responsible Tourism Hosts Super Bowl Preparedness Campaign for Vacation Rental Operators
    • vacation-rentals-housing-vrm-intel
      Carrots and sticks: Vacation rentals and the creation of affordable, workforce housing
    • Woman dropping off a ballot
      2022 Election Results of Vacation Rental Ballot Measures
    • Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business
    • How to Increase Your Occupancy in a Competitive Market through Monthly Rentals
    • VRM Intel News
    • Latest News
    • Sponsor News
  • COVID-19
    • Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business
    • 2022 Vacation Rental acquisitions from AvantStay, VTrips, Vacasa, Meredith, and more
      Who Sold? Here’s What We Know: 2022 Vacation Rental Management Acquisitions
    • 2021/2022 Ski Destinations Showing Big Performance Gains in ADR and RevPAR for Vacation Homes and Condos
    • “It’s like a short-term rental regulation pandemic.” 2022 Spring Vacation Rental Regulatory Trends + Fall Outlook
    • HR 2022: Attracting Today’s New Workforce after the Resignation Tsunami and the Great Renegotiation
  • Marketing
    • Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business
    • How to Increase Your Occupancy in a Competitive Market through Monthly Rentals
    • board meeting in presentation room
      Tourism Boards and DMOs Offer Seat at the Table for Vacation Rentals
    • Geotargeting & SEM: A How-To Guide on Spending Less & Getting More
    • All About the Data: Predictive Indicators with Jason Sprenkle
  • Tech
    • Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business
    • Geotargeting & SEM: A How-To Guide on Spending Less & Getting More
    • All About the Data: Predictive Indicators with Jason Sprenkle
    • PriceLabs Announces $30 Million Investment from Summit Partners
    • Ximplifi Adds Owner Portal to Automation Suite for Short Term Rental Accounting
  • OTAs
    • How to Increase Your Occupancy in a Competitive Market through Monthly Rentals
    • Blue Star Acquires Majority Stake in TravelNet Solutions
    • Vacation Rental Data and Revenue Management Conference, DARM 2022, Nashville
      Sessions Details for Upcoming Vacation Rental Data and Revenue Management (DARM) Conference: Livestream/Video Tickets Available
    • Vacasa (VCSA) Stock Falls as Lock-up Period Expires
    • 4 Ways to Stand Out in a Crowded Market: Get Your Brand & Listings in Front of Potential Guests
  • Customer Service
    • Why Not A Hotel? A Guest and Homeowner’s Perspective: There’s No Place Like Home … Or Is There?
    • Leading Proptech Company Guesty Appoints David Aber as CFO
    • Meredith Hospitality Brands Inc. Expands to Mt Hood with Acquisition of Mt Hood Vacation Rentals
    • View of Waikiki from Diamond Head Park, Honolulu, Hawaii
      Honolulu City Council Bans Stays Under 90 Days Across Oahu
    • Are you a Visionary without an Integrator at Your Vacation Rental Management Company?
  • Regulations
    • vacation-rentals-housing-vrm-intel
      Carrots and sticks: Vacation rentals and the creation of affordable, workforce housing
    • Woman dropping off a ballot
      2022 Election Results of Vacation Rental Ballot Measures
    • voters at a polling center voting
      Dozens of Vacation Rental Ballot Measures Heading to Voters this November
    • board meeting in presentation room
      Tourism Boards and DMOs Offer Seat at the Table for Vacation Rentals
    • Arizona state flag outside the legislature buildings at the state capitol
      Arizona Legislature Passes Measure to Restore Some Power to Cities
  • Business
    • Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business
    • Geotargeting & SEM: A How-To Guide on Spending Less & Getting More
    • All About the Data: Predictive Indicators with Jason Sprenkle
    • PriceLabs Announces $30 Million Investment from Summit Partners
    • Ximplifi Adds Owner Portal to Automation Suite for Short Term Rental Accounting
  • Housekeeping
    • Why Not A Hotel? A Guest and Homeowner’s Perspective: There’s No Place Like Home … Or Is There?
    • Analysis: “Reinventing” Vacation Rental Management by Alex Nigg
    • HR 2022: Attracting Today’s New Workforce after the Resignation Tsunami and the Great Renegotiation
    • Safety First: Evaluating and Addressing Safety Risks at Your Vacation Rentals
    • The Importance of the Guest Experience within Vacation Rental Operations: From the Back of the House to the Front
  • Subscribe
  • More
    • Calendar of Events
    • VRM Intel Live!
    • Reports Login
    • VRM Intel Magazine
    • Advertise
    • Authors
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
  • RSS

Industry News for Vacation Rental Managers

Carrying the Torch: 5 Generations of Vacation Rental Hospitality

Carrying the Torch: 5 Generations of Vacation Rental Hospitality
mm
Alexa Nota
March 1, 2019

When Walt Plimpton was 10 years old, his job was to tow a little red wagon from cabin to cabin collecting trash bins and dirty sheets. He brought the sheets home where his mother, Miriam Plimpton, washed them, hung them out to dry, and ran them through a mangle to smooth any wrinkles. Walt then trucked the clean and crisp linens back to the cabins where his older brother, Donald, made the beds.

“We didn’t have maids, we cleaned ourselves,” Walt said. This was 1940. Miriam and Walt’s father, Herbert Plimpton, had just opened New England Village in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. The collection of little “overnight homes,” as they were called then, were arranged like a miniature town. Some were even themed as Main Street mainstays. One was built to look like a church, another like a school, and a third like a doctor’s office.

Herbert Plimpton playing with a dog in front of New England Village

Herbert Plimpton playing with a dog in front of New England Village

This wasn’t the family’s first venture into overnight homes. In fact, Walt was a third-generation property manager. His maternal grandmother, Eva Peterson, opened Peterson’s Cabins along Route 1 in Wells, Maine, in 1922. They had no plumbing, no running water, and no electricity. She charged $0.75 per person, per night. She housed her oldest daughter and her eight kids in a big farmhouse nearby, and they helped clean and take care of the cabins in return.

Miriam and Herbert Plimpton in front of New England Village

Miriam and Herbert Plimpton in front of New England Village

By the time the Plimptons opened New England Village, just after the Great Depression, the going rate had increased to $1.25 per person, per night, and electricity was more common. The big trend back then was to have a radio in the house—soon to be followed by three-channel televisions.

Despite the recovering economy, Walt made sure to seek additional revenue sources. When his wagon wasn’t full of laundry, he collected the little green glass Coca Cola and ginger ale bottles left behind by guests—then 7 cents apiece—and towed them down to the local country store to turn them in for a nickel each. On good days, he earned as much as 70 or 80 cents a haul.

He laughed as he remembered those days. The day before we spoke he had gone to see his barber, who was running a $10 haircut special. “I don’t have that much hair anymore,” he said, “but I remember when my mom would hand me two quarters to go get a haircut as a kid, and I had a lot more hair back then!”

Walt is now 88. He has spent nearly eight decades in the vacation rental industry, and he remembers every minute of it. He has watched as motor courts evolved into motels; as resort towns sprang up along Route 1, up and down the East Coast, and then moved west; and as various destinations succeeded and failed in their attempts to grow tourism.  

During the mandatory nightly blackouts along the coast during World War II, his dad would skirt the rule against outdoor lights by cutting out “OVERNIGHT CABINS” from their cabins’ roll-down shades so people driving by could still see them. His mom would visit their competitors’ houses in the dark and count the cars in the driveway to track occupancy.

New England Village cabins covered in snow

New England Village cabins covered in snow

After Herbert passed away in the early 1950s and her kids were off at college, Miriam began to rent out four rooms in her own home to New Hampshire state troopers. At the time, the state didn’t have local offices, so she housed them, and they helped keep her safe. She called them “her boys,” and they called her their “state trooper mom.” She was later recognized with an award from the department.

Walt and Joanne Plimpton

Walt and Joanne Plimpton

Walt has carried the hospitality gene with him ever since. When he and his wife, Joanne, honeymooned in Orange Beach, Alabama, in 1957, there were only a handful of old cabins there. “No stores, no restaurants, and none of the tourism development guests find there today,” Walt said.

In the 1960s, they bought their own vacation rental in the area. After it was destroyed twice by hurricanes, most recently Hurricane Ivan in 2004, the home was rebuilt anew with six bedrooms and building codes to withstand today’s storms. It books solid most of the year.

“He hasn’t gone without a rental in his 88 years,” said Greg Plimpton, Walt’s son, who helps take care of the home now.

Greg also takes care of hundreds of other homes around Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, with Cabins for YOU, the vacation rental management company he started with his wife, Debbie, in 2001. On their 20th anniversary, the two visited Gatlinburg from their home in Georgia and decided to purchase three vacation rental homes of their own. At the time, there were about 160 property management companies in the Smoky Mountains, and Cabins for YOU was the smallest.

Today, nearly a century away from his great grandmother Eva’s plumbing-free cabins in Maine, Cabins for YOU is now one of the top five management companies in the region. The company has 330 homes, 70 employees, 50 housekeepers, and 25,000 reservations a year. Most of their guests are families in the summer, honeymooners, and nearly everyone in the fall for leaf season.

Cabins for YOU vacation rental home smoky mountains

Greg and Debbie manage the company from their Georgia office near their home in Cartersville, where they have lived for 15 years. True to Plimpton fashion, the company is now a fifth-generation family business. Greg and Debbie’s oldest daughter, Jessica Dewberry, is head of finance and human resources, and her husband, Marc Dewberry, is their chief marketing officer. Their second daughter, Emily Crumpler, does consulting for them to recruit new homeowners and owns seven homes herself.

Their fourth daughter, Rachel Shadle, works in owner care, and her husband, Matthew, handles their IT as well as the building and grounds management of all three offices and all family-owned real estate. Their youngest child, Seth Plimpton, is a finance major at Auburn University, and he says he wants to get back into the business after he graduates. He currently works on the company’s website from campus.

The Plimpton family at Rachel's wedding

The Plimpton family at Rachel’s wedding

Even with the large staff and support of their family and management team, Greg and Debbie are active in every area of the business. Debbie handles operations while Greg covers legal, marketing, and other areas.

Altogether, they focus intently on the needs of their owners. “Every decision we make points back to the real client—and that’s not the guest,” Greg said. “We respond to owners 24 hours a day. An owner gives us 65 bookings a year. A guest gives us one.”

Even with four full-time owner reps to serve their needs, Greg loves interacting with owners directly. “Owners energize you because they want investment advice, decorating advice, and sometimes they have legitimate complaints that you can help with.” His advice to other property managers is to find out what owners want and need, and communicate, communicate, communicate.

His advice has been tested over the past two years since the Gatlinburg fire in November of 2016. One of the largest natural disasters in the history of the state, the fire burned more than 21,000 acres and wiped out more than 2,000 buildings, many of which were vacation rental homes. Cabins for YOU lost 38 to the fire and another 32 that were purchased by residents after their own homes were destroyed.

The region is still recovering. There are burned out streets, and guests still cancel their reservations because they don’t want to stay next door to charred lots. The losses cost Cabins for YOU about $2 million in 2017, but this year they have regained about 12 percent of their lost inventory.

Greg credits much of the company’s resiliency and long-term success to its competitiveness. “If we see anyone doing anything that makes sense, we have a meeting about it.” They attend conferences and listen intently, take notes, and participate in discussions. Generally they take the lead with better flash sales, better contests, and other strategies. “If you want a successful business, hire very competitive people. They don’t come to work to just do the job.”

When they need to recharge their batteries, Greg and Debbie take time away to head to their own vacation rental or visit their third daughter, Simone Puccinelli. She’s the only one of their kids who is forging a path wildly different from property management, and her parents love what she does. She founded Simone’s Kids, a nonprofit organization in Uganda that supports orphaned and poverty-stricken children who are unable to afford an education. They try to visit her there at least once a year.

Rachel (Plimpton) Shadle and her daughter, Ava

Rachel (Plimpton) Shadle and her daughter, Ava

Retirement isn’t on the horizon just yet for the Plimptons, but they are hopeful that when it is, they’ll pass the torch to the next generation—not just their children but their five grandchildren. If they stay in the family business, they will be sixth-generation property managers and great great great grandchildren to Eva Peterson’s cabins.

However, they will have to wait a while to find out if that will happen. In 2022, on the 100th anniversary of the original cabins, the youngest of the sixth generation, Ava, will be just four years old.

Related ItemsAlabamaauburn universityCabins for YOUcartersvillecoca coladebbie plimptondonald plimptonemily crumplereva petersonFeaturedgatlinburggatlinburg fireGeorgiagreat depressiongreg plimptonhampton fallsherbert plimptonhurricane ivanjessica dewberryjoanne plimptonMainemarc dewberrymatthew shadlemiriam plimptonnew england villagenew hampshireOrange Beachovernight cabinspeterson's cabinsrachel shadleroute 1seth plimptonsimone's kidssimpne pucinellismoky mountainsTennesseeugandawalt plimptonwellsworld war II
View Comments (3)

3 Comments

  1. Brian Smith says:
    October 15, 2021 at 12:01 am

    Wow. This is a nice PR piece. The numerous complaints online at various sites about Cabins for YOU (Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge) certainly contradict all of this. Check Yelp, check TripAdvisor, check any number of travel review sites.

    Might need to take some better notes at these alleged conferences and conventions.

    Reply
  2. Johnny says:
    October 14, 2021 at 1:54 pm

    https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g60842-i150-k5063454-Anyone_used_Cabins_for_you-Gatlinburg_Tennessee.html

    surprised they are still in business…..

    Reply
  3. Clark Twiddy says:
    March 4, 2019 at 9:12 am

    Great article Alexa…great content here and a pleasure to read.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Industry News for Vacation Rental Managers
March 1, 2019
mm
Alexa Nota

Alexa Nota is the co-founder and COO of Rent Responsibly. A journalist and marketer by trade, Alexa has served in many roles in the industry, including marketing director for a property management companies on North Carolina’s Outer Banks and Telluride, CO. She also served as vice president of VRM Intel where she reported on STR regulations around the country. Here she realized the need and passion for engaged local alliances and associations in order to create fair regulations and a secure home for vacation rentals in every destination's tourism economy. Together with David Krauss in 2019, she co-founded Rent Responsibly, a community-building and education platform for local vacation rental alliances. Learn more at RentResponsibly.org.

Related ItemsAlabamaauburn universityCabins for YOUcartersvillecoca coladebbie plimptondonald plimptonemily crumplereva petersonFeaturedgatlinburggatlinburg fireGeorgiagreat depressiongreg plimptonhampton fallsherbert plimptonhurricane ivanjessica dewberryjoanne plimptonMainemarc dewberrymatthew shadlemiriam plimptonnew england villagenew hampshireOrange Beachovernight cabinspeterson's cabinsrachel shadleroute 1seth plimptonsimone's kidssimpne pucinellismoky mountainsTennesseeugandawalt plimptonwellsworld war II

More in Industry News for Vacation Rental Managers

Arizonans for Responsible Tourism Pregame Prep Campaign

Arizonans for Responsible Tourism Hosts Super Bowl Preparedness Campaign for Vacation Rental Operators

Alexa NotaJanuary 18, 2023
Read More
vacation-rentals-housing-vrm-intel

Carrots and sticks: Vacation rentals and the creation of affordable, workforce housing

Alexa NotaDecember 6, 2022
Read More
Woman dropping off a ballot

2022 Election Results of Vacation Rental Ballot Measures

Paris AchenNovember 11, 2022
Read More

Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business

Sarah DuPreOctober 18, 2022
Read More

How to Increase Your Occupancy in a Competitive Market through Monthly Rentals

Sean BeckhamSeptember 16, 2022
Read More

Guesty Raises Additional $170 Million in Series E to Expand Internationally and to New Verticals

Amy HinoteAugust 16, 2022
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Sponsor News

  • Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business
    BusinessOctober 18, 2022
  • How to Increase Your Occupancy in a Competitive Market through Monthly Rentals
    Industry News for Vacation Rental ManagersSeptember 16, 2022
  • PriceLabs Announces $30 Million Investment from Summit Partners
    BusinessAugust 5, 2022
  • Ximplifi Adds Owner Portal to Automation Suite for Short Term Rental Accounting
    BusinessAugust 4, 2022
VRM Intel
Calendar of Events
Videos & Whitepapers
VRMintel Magazine
Subscribe
Advertise
About Us
Authors
Contact Us

Recent News

  • Arizonans for Responsible Tourism Pregame Prep Campaign
    Arizonans for Responsible Tourism Hosts Super Bowl Preparedness Campaign for Vacation Rental Operators
    Industry News for Vacation Rental ManagersJanuary 18, 2023
  • vacation-rentals-housing-vrm-intel
    Carrots and sticks: Vacation rentals and the creation of affordable, workforce housing
    Industry News for Vacation Rental ManagersDecember 6, 2022
  • Woman dropping off a ballot
    2022 Election Results of Vacation Rental Ballot Measures
    Industry News for Vacation Rental ManagersNovember 11, 2022
  • Recession-Proofing Your Vacation Rental Business
    BusinessOctober 18, 2022

View Current Issue

VRMintel Copyright © 2016-17 | Click HERE to Subscribe | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer | Copyright | Jobs | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

The Opportunities In Between: Capturing the Niche Markets Others Don’t
Embracing the end-to-end guest experience: How Leslie Preston built Bachcare, New Zealand’s largest property management company

xxx videos

  • mamadas
  • redwap
  • free porn
  • porno gratis