OEN Member NewsVacasa lands hospitality veteran as operations chief (Portland Business Journal)

Portland vacation home rental platform Vacasa has added valuable industry experience to its executive team with its latest hire.

Hospitality veteran Bob Milne has joined the company as chief operations officer. Milne, who’s been on the job for about a month, comes to a company that’s both developing more technology to aid its employees and customers as it expands into new markets.

Milne counts 20 years-plus of vacation rental and resort industry experience. For the last several years, he has run a hospitality business consulting firm from his home base in Steamboat Springs, Colo.

Before that, he was president of Wyndam Vacation Rentals North America for three years. He joined Wyndam after it bought his vacation rental company The Resort Company in 2011.

Vacasa hired retail veteran Kuljeet Singh as COO in 2015. It parted ways with Singh last year, according to the company.

For his part, Milne said he has watched Vacasa grow for a few years, taking not of how the company’s technology both reserved rentals and generated revenue as it coordinated far-flung staff members.

“Here is a company that realizes that technology doesn’t have to just be used in the typical sense,” Milne said. “There is a way to use it for operational efficiency as well.”

Vacasa helps vacation home owners book, market and maintain properties. The company’s platform has more than 5,000 properties and is available in 22 U.S. states and 15 countries.

The company employs 1,000-plus workers, with many in the cities where Vacasa’s rental properties are located. Some 300 of the employees are at its Portland headquarters.

Milne will be based in Colorado but expects to travel extensively across the company’s footprint.

In April, Vacasa hired Tim Goodwin as chief technology officer.

Source: www.bizjournals.com