TPN Chats: Luxury Villa Travel and the Power of Personalization with with Willie Fernandez of Rental Escapes and Andy Ogg

May, 2026 – In this episode of TPN Chat, Andy Ogg sits down with Willie Fernandez, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Rental Escapes, for a wide-ranging conversation about why villas have become one of the fastest-growing — and most underestimated — categories in travel.

 

Willie pulls back the curtain on a portfolio of roughly 5,000 fully vetted villas across more than 175 destinations on six continents, ranging from $500-a-night hideaways to $150,000-a-night showstoppers. But the conversation goes well beyond the inventory. He breaks down the real differences between Rental Escapes and the do-it-yourself rental sites, why every property is personally inspected, and how a 10% guaranteed commission (plus up to a $5,000 booking bonus this May for Travel Advisor Appreciation Month) makes villas a serious revenue play for advisors.

 

The episode dives into some of the most useful selling tactics Willie shares with advisors during his weekly “Wednesdays with Willie” sessions — including a simple pricing tweak that reframes a villa quote as a no-brainer next to a comparable resort stay. Andy and Willie also get into accessible villa options, the full-service guest experience team that handles everything from private chefs to hot air balloon rides, and why a staffed villa might just be the “vacation from your vacation” your clients didn’t know they needed.

 

Plus, Willie walks through Rental Escapes’ award-winning marketing toolkit for advisors — the unbranded client-facing website, 21 destination magazines, the new weddings and sports magazines, and the free travel advisor portal that puts it all in one place.

 

Whether you’re villa-curious or already booking them regularly, this conversation is packed with practical takeaways, a few great stories (wait until you hear about Agus and the ham-and-cheese sandwich), and a fresh look at where the luxury rental space is heading. Watch the full conversation below, and find the complete transcript underneath.

 

 

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Andy Ogg: Welcome to the Travel Professional News Podcast, your essential source for staying ahead in the travel industry. Good afternoon, good morning, good day, good evening, good night — wherever you guys are watching this today. I really appreciate you tuning in, whether it’s on the social channels, YouTube, or our websites.

Thank you for taking the time to join myself and a good friend of mine, Willie from Rental Escapes. My name is Andy Ogg, and I do a lot of the volunteer work here at our family of brands, which includes TravelProfessionalNews.com, FindAHostTravelAgency.com, and HomeBasedTravelAgent.com — all fantastic resources really focused on the travel advisor and providing assets, marketing goods, images, videos, and tons of good information on how to grow your business, run your business, and maximize your business, especially with the implementation of AI.

So today I’ve got the really cool opportunity to sit here with my friend Willie. Willie, tell me about yourself, man.

 

Willie Fernandez: Andy, first and foremost, you do a lot more than volunteer. You are so instrumental over there. I know Joni is the host when we do the webinars, but I know you do a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff, and TPro News just wouldn’t be the same without you.

For all the travel advisors watching around the world — welcome. Looking forward to this conversation. Andy reached out and said, “Hey, can we spend some time together?” I said, “Absolutely, Andy. Let’s do it.”

So I’m Willie Fernandez. I’m the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer here at Rental Escapes. For those of you who may not know about us, we are a company that prides itself in creating very personalized villa experiences all around the world. We have a portfolio of about 5,000 villas, all fully vetted and inspected, in over 175 destinations on six continents. We’ve got everything from a one-bedroom to a 28-bedroom property. Starting price point is about $500 a night, all the way up to about $150,000 a night.

If you tune in to Travel Professional News, you’ll see that throughout the year we also do webinars. I actually let Joni pick what destination we do the webinars for. So Joni, Andy, and the team will live vicariously through all of the villas in the various destinations.

We’ve got an upcoming one in the Turks and Caicos, which is my personal favorite villa destination — where me and my family tend to vacation the most. The villa you see here on my wallpaper, that is my favorite villa in St. Barts. That is Neo. That’s what I would classify as a six-star villa. It overlooks St. Jean Beach, and it is absolutely breathtaking. And Andy, I know it’s one of Joni’s favorites as well.

 

Andy Ogg: Oh, yeah. I remember the first webinar we did with y’all. I was listening to it, ran out of my office, and I went, “Honey, we gotta find a way to do this. It sounds so fun and easy.” Then I kind of figured out we can’t afford that yet with the three little kids. But I’m glad we’re connecting. It’s been a really great year working with you and learning so much about you.

I remember the first webinar. I think you left that thing with four or five really hot leads of clients looking for a big party — whether it was a wedding, a get-together, or a reunion. And I hope some of those materialized for you.

Your product is really unique and very different than the Airbnb or VRBO model. Can you tell me what those main differences are? If somebody’s talking about a vacation and they want to do an Airbnb — what’s the difference?

 

Willie Fernandez: First and foremost, the big difference is as it relates to our travel partners. We pay a commission. We pay a guaranteed commission of 10% on every booking. Plus, right now in the month of May, as part of Travel Advisor Appreciation Month, we’re paying a bonus commission of up to $5,000 per booking. And that’s any booking made in the month of May that travels by December 31, 2027.

Number two, every villa in our portfolio is fully vetted and inspected. So unlike the do-it-yourself sites, where I can close on a house at 10 a.m. and have it up on one of these sites by 2 p.m. and have my friends load it up with reviews when they’ve never stayed there — with us, you know that someone at Rental Escapes has taken the time to vet and inspect this property. It has met our standards. What you see on the site in terms of photos, descriptions, and amenities — we stand behind the quality of that.

I was a former travel advisor at one point in my career, and I believe in providing travel advisors with direct access to me. When I do the webinars, I always give out my phone number and email address and tell the travel advisors: reach out to me seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Whatever I can do to help you close a sale, close your business, I will do it.

In fact, even though I’m not doing a webinar now, I’ll give you my phone number: 407-946-5099. You have a question about a villa? About marketing? About luxury travel? About making the move from mass market to luxury? Anything I can do to help — feel free, give me a call.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s so generous, and that’s so cool. I remember you doing that and going, “Man, I hope he knows how many spam bots are going to be paying attention to this.” But I really think that’s awesome.

Obviously I can’t see very well — hence the shades. Let me ask you, in terms of disability travel, does your business offer assistive help to anyone who might need it if they’re a client?

 

Willie Fernandez: Yeah. One of the things we look for when we’re inspecting villas — I’m always wearing my travel advisor hat — is ADA-compliant villas wherever possible. In some countries they may not recognize the ADA as we do here in the U.S., but we understand what that means.

I’m looking for villas that have open floor plans where the furniture is not bulky, so if we have a guest with a mobility issue, they can easily get around the villa. If the villa is multi-story, we want bedrooms on the ground floor, and that the shower is one nobody has to step into — they can easily walk into it or wheel into it.

So much so that on the Rental Escapes website, right on the home page, we’ve created a collection of what we call accessible villas. If you visit RentalEscapes.com, about three-quarters of the way down you’ll see our section of collections. We have a golf collection, a weddings collection, our newest villas collection, villas with chefs — and there you’ll see the accessible villas collection. Those are villas we know for certain are geared toward any guest with accessibility needs.

Going back to the do-it-yourself sites — we don’t offer online booking. We provide a full and complete luxury service. We know these villas inside and out, and we act as a matchmaker.

When you work with us, the villa specialist is going to ask a whole series of questions. They want to get to know your clients, get to know you. From there, they’re going to do the research to identify villas they believe are ideal for your client. We’re not going to rent you a villa for the sake of renting you a villa. We want to understand: are they celebrating something? What’s the purpose of the trip? Do they want to be on the beach? Near a vineyard? The ages of who’s traveling? Is there a disability involved?

We will then go find those villas and present them with full pricing, team breakdown, and links to the unbranded website so you can share them with your clients. That is really what we do, and it’s at the heart of what we do — because we want to ensure your clients have the most unbelievable villa experience anywhere in the world.

 

Andy Ogg: When they’re putting together those packages, are they bringing in air, transfers, all of that as well — for the agent to share with the client?

 

Willie Fernandez: There are two facets to what we do. First, it starts with securing the villa. We collect a lot of information up front, and that information is then shared with our award-winning guest experience team. That’s the team that arranges all the in-destination experiences as well as the in-villa services.

Everything from ground transportation, private chefs, pre-stocking of food. We don’t do commercial airfare, but we will do private jets, boat trips, hot air balloon rides, horseback riding on the beach. Birthday parties, corporate retreats, wellness retreats, weddings, pickleball instruction. We will ship your golf clubs. Literally anything and everything the client can dream of.

 

Andy Ogg: That sounds like so much fun. Personally, our last vacation was about three years ago — we went to Hawaii for about 10 days, and my two kids at the time… we had our third back in July of 2024. Time’s turning too soon. We did it all ourselves, and there were some amazing moments. We learned a lot about us traveling — obviously with me having a disability and small children and how much was on my wife’s shoulders.

When we talk about doing a trip in the future, we’ve talked about how it’s worth it for us to invest more money and have some ease, because it’s already hard. And honestly, something like this would be so much fun for my family — to show up to a beautiful place and have food in the refrigerator for these three kids that eat nonstop, and enjoy a beautiful sunset without having to worry about going to Costco or finding the store. It sounds so attractive.

 

Willie Fernandez: Even better than that — you could be in a villa that has staff. Where you and your wife don’t have to cook. With housekeeping. With a laundress that will help you unpack, do your laundry, help you repack, and send you home with a suitcase full of clean clothing.

Here’s the misconception about villas. There’s this mindset that villas are for very high net worth, very expensive — a proposition within travel. I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. One of the things I remember as a former travel advisor is that luxury meant something different to every one of my clients. What was luxury to one client at $500 a night was luxury to another at $10,000 a night, $50,000 a night.

When we go into the villas, we look to cast a wide net on pricing without sacrificing the quality of the property and maintaining that “this is luxury.”

Travel advisors will often come to me during my Wednesdays with Willie and say, “Hey, Willie, I’ve quoted you guys a bunch of times, but I haven’t closed the sale yet. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.” So I always ask, “Tell me how you’re presenting it to your clients. Are you giving them the total price?” “I’m telling them it’s $10,000 out of the gate, or $15,000.” I say, “No. That’s not how I’d recommend doing it. Break it down to the per-bedroom cost on a nightly basis.”

Why? Because then you can compare it to that of a hotel or a resort.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s great advice.

 

Willie Fernandez: Just a bit ago, I sent out a quote to a travel advisor who asked for my opinion on some properties in the Orlando area. I’m based in Orlando — we have beautiful villas 15 minutes away from the theme parks. They have a group of 20. They’re taking two villas right next door to one another. When I priced it out, I told them: this works out to $120 per bedroom per night.

Why? Because they can compare that to the fact that at the theme parks, they’re going to pay $450 a bedroom. Or $500. Or if they go to the really high end, $1,100, $1,200 a bedroom. We have villas in Jamaica that are on the beach, fully staffed, that are $450 a bedroom — they’re $3,600 a night, but it breaks down to $450 a bedroom. Compare that to a hotel or resort in Ocho Rios. Or fully staffed villas in the Dominican Republic for $500 a night.

That’s how I always recommend presenting it to your client, because they’re going to go, “Wow, that’s a deal. That’s tremendous value for what I’m getting.”

If you’re booking hotels and resorts and you’ve got a large group, you don’t know that they’re all going to be on the same floor. In some cases, you may not even know they’ll be in the same building. Andy, in your case, if the Ogg family does a giant family reunion and your girls need to take a nap, who’s going up to the room for a couple of hours while they take a nap?

 

Andy Ogg: Usually it’s me and my wife, and we find our way to the balcony and hide out there. It’s something we think about constantly.

 

Willie Fernandez: Right. Now you’re confined to your resort room for two, three hours. Do that over the course of seven days — that’s 14 to 21 hours sitting in your room, missing valuable pool or beach time. At the villa, you can bring them right into the room and the staff can watch the kids while they nap. You go right back down to the beach or the pool.

Or if you’re chatting with your girls — let’s say you were at a resort in Hawaii, what time were you waking up to go grab a pool chair? That doesn’t happen at the villa. It’s your pool. It’s your pool chair. You’re not going to share the pool with 500 of your closest friends. It’s your private space.

I tell travel advisors: when you’re getting requests for multiple hotel rooms or resort rooms, always consider the villa as an option. Even if your client hasn’t asked for a villa, present it. Because the experience they’re going to get in the comfort of their own private setting, especially with staff, is far superior to anything they’re going to get at a hotel or resort.

If they’re traveling with kids — or even with adults like myself, where I have food allergies — if I have the chef, I know what’s happening in that kitchen. Are they cooking with seed oil or not? Using dairy or not? Is there cross-contamination? You don’t know what’s happening in the back of the house at a hotel. At the villa, you know exactly what’s happening because you’re watching it and you have direct access to the chef right there in the room.

 

Andy Ogg: Is there a minimum night stay a travel advisor should know about?

 

Willie Fernandez: On the website we identify the minimum night stays because they’re determined by the owners. We don’t physically own these properties — we work with direct homeowners and management companies to facilitate the whole process. We’ve really become the experts when it comes to luxury villa rentals.

In the Caribbean, where I used to see seven-night minimums, I’m starting to see five-night minimums. In some cases I’m even seeing three- and four-night minimums. I would never say anything less than three. But for the most part, I’m seeing in that five- to seven-night range.

Christmas and New Year’s is where I see the stricter minimum night stays — anywhere from 7, 10, 12, 14 nights depending how the holidays fall. If they fall over weekends, it could be 14. Midweek, maybe seven or ten. It depends on the year.

 

Andy Ogg: That makes tons of sense. And you made a good point — when an agent is building something for a client, this could be pre or post a cruise, an added staycation. There’s a very valuable option when you say per room you’re spending $200 versus pulling up the JW Marriott for $450 a night. The benefits of staying in their own space with possible help — that is a very powerful selling tool for agents.

 

Willie Fernandez: For 25 years of my career, I spent it in the cruise industry, fortunate and blessed enough to travel the world on hundreds of ships. For the last 11 years I’ve been in the villa industry. Two years ago, we were down in the Turks and Caicos. I share this story all the time. I now allow my kids to pick where in the world they want to go.

They chose the Turks and Caicos. We were in a beautiful beachfront villa on Grace Bay Beach. The first day we were there, my daughter walks up to me and says, “Daddy, I’m hungry.” At home I’m the chef, so it’s natural for her to come to me. I said, “Just ask Agus that you would like lunch.” I could see how shy and uncomfortable she was at first to ask someone else to make her lunch.

Within a matter of minutes, Agus came out and said, “It’s almost lunchtime. What would you all like?” I said, “Agus, Alyssa’s hungry. Alyssa, what would you like to eat?” She said, “I just want a ham and cheese sandwich.”

With a huge smile and pride that he was going to make this sandwich for her, he went back inside, made her a ham and cheese sandwich, brought it out, and she took a bite and said, “Daddy, this is the most delicious sandwich, and it’s just ham and cheese.” But in her mind, someone else was looking after her. After that sandwich, she was never embarrassed again to ask.

So in 2025, I asked the kids, “Where do you want to go?” My daughter said, “I want to go back to the Turks and Caicos, and I want to see Agus.”

As a parent and as someone who travels to all these villas all the time, being able to have those moments with my family and see the smiles on their faces is incredible. That particular villa also has a lot of non-motorized water toys. I remember watching my daughter — a bit fearful of getting on a paddleboard. I was holding the back of it. She stood up and started paddling. Eventually she gained the confidence to do it on her own. By the second or third day, she was doing it on her own.

I heard her scream, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” When I looked back, I said, “What?” She was paddling alongside sea turtles. She was yelling to her brother. He grabbed the snorkel and mask and started to swim out, and he was able to take in that moment with her — where she was seeing the turtles above the surface, and he was seeing the sea turtles below.

I remember my wife telling me when we were coming home, sitting on the Southwest plane: “That’s really the first time I felt I was on vacation. I didn’t have to cook, I didn’t have to clean.” And then she said the most important thing to me: “I didn’t have to worry.”

What’s most important about all of that is, as an advisor, you don’t have to worry either — because we take care of all of that. We coordinate with the staff, the pre-stocking of food, ground transportation, creating itineraries for your clients anywhere in the world. So if you get a request for a destination you’re not familiar with, it’s okay. As your partner, we’re familiar with it.

If Andy and the family reaches out to me and says, “We want to go to St. Barts, where do we start?” — we’re going to provide all the guidance they need: securing the villa, ground transportation, food, staff, restaurant reservations, a day out on the boat, a birthday party for one of the girls. We will literally take care of it all.

 

Andy Ogg: Every single time we have talked — before a webinar, during, after — I get this itch. Man, this is what we need to do. My wife and I feel the same way. We go on a trip and it’s maybe 10 minutes of sitting on the beach actually relaxing before one of the kids needs us to do something. It sounds like a vacation of vacations.

 

Willie Fernandez: They say it’s a vacation from your vacation. If you set it up right, you’re going to be eating like a king, the house is going to be clean, and you come home and your laundry is not full of sand — it’s folded and pressed.

There’s nothing better than coming home after a week at a villa and not having to do four suitcases of dirty clothes. Having the laundress or housekeeper at the villa do the laundry for you and help you repack so you come home with a suitcase full of clean clothes. It’s a game changer.

 

Andy Ogg: With everything going on in the industry, AI is everywhere now and every agent’s using it. Have you been seeing an increase in the rental business compared to the hotel business? What have you been seeing in the past year?

 

Willie Fernandez: I’ll tell you what I’ve seen since the pandemic. We have not seen a single month of slowdown. We’ve seen the villa business and the villa industry on a massive trajectory. Over the last five years, we as a company have more than doubled our staff to meet the demand from our travel partners and their guests.

In terms of booking the villas, we’ve added about 40% more villa inventory across an additional 40-plus destinations to meet the demand from our travel advisors as to where their clients want to travel.

We’ve increased our services and experience offerings because one of the things I saw coming out of the pandemic is that what used to be a bucket-list item for a client is now a to-do list. They’re looking to experience destinations in really unique ways. We as your partner have to make sure we have those experiences available — or go grab experiences that maybe your clients aren’t thinking about, that we then combine with the villa to enhance the overall experience.

There hasn’t been a slowdown. We thought 2025 was a better year. 2026 has more than surpassed 2025. There are some destinations bubbling up to the top that aren’t surprising us, but they’re having us pay attention. One of those in particular is Costa Rica. That’s a destination where we’re seeing really strong demand. I believe a lot of what we’ve been experiencing in Mexico — what happened in February out in Puerto Vallarta and most recently in the ruins — the traveling public has started to shy away from Mexico. They’re looking for alternatives. We’re seeing a massive shift back to the Caribbean, but more importantly, a really strong shift over to Costa Rica.

In Costa Rica there’s tremendous value. I was just with some travel advisors on Monday and I showed them a brand-new villa we just added called Casa Manuel Antonio. It’s a beautiful four-story villa, 10 bedrooms. The price on that with staff is $250 a bedroom — $2,500 a night.

 

Andy Ogg: Wow.

 

Willie Fernandez: For the travel advisors listening, visit RentalEscapes.com and look up Casa Manuel Antonio in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica. You’ll also find it under our new villas collection. It is absolutely breathtaking.

 

Andy Ogg: I’m so happy that things are going so well for you all. From everything I’ve seen and what you’ve presented to our following, it sounds like such a home run for agents to offer to any of their clients looking to do a trip — whether it’s generational, a huge family get-together, or work-related. There’s a lot of opportunity for sure.

 

Willie Fernandez: I know I’m going to be doing a webinar real soon on the Turks and Caicos. For the advisors who aren’t able to attend live — I know you guys record it and post it on Travel Professional News — that’s definitely not a webinar you want to miss. That’s my favorite destination. I’m going to highlight my favorite villas, my tips and tricks, the must-sees and must-dos. From my perspective not only as a travel advisor but most importantly as a dad — what to do with your kids and your spouse, where to send your clients to eat, and how to really experience a Turks and Caicos.

 

Andy Ogg: Absolutely. If you’re on a device right now, you can go to TravelProfessionalNews.com, hit “Webinars” at the top, and register for that upcoming webinar with Willie and Rental Escapes. Don’t miss it — and you can be present for the giveaways that seem to happen at all your webinars.

 

Willie Fernandez: I love to give to our travel advisor partners. When we do the webinars, I like to give out Amazon gift cards. We’ve got the bonus commission. One thing we haven’t talked about, Andy — and I’ve said it a couple of times during our chat today — I was a former travel advisor. Travel advisors are near and dear to my heart and to the hearts of every one of us at Rental Escapes.

In April of 2023, we launched the industry-first and only rewards program geared specifically for the travel advisor community. We’re always looking for ways to give back to the travel advisors who support Rental Escapes. With this program, travel advisors earn free villa vacations. The program is simple: for every dollar the travel advisor books with us, they earn points, and those points are transferred into free villa night stays.

But what’s most important — and I remember this from being a travel advisor back in the day — I was racking up my points and saving them to be able to go to Italy. I was excited to go to Italy. When I was getting ready to go, I learned I was going to have a son on the way, so I had to postpone my trip. I waited about a year for him to get a little older so my mom could watch him. When I went to cash in my points, I learned my points had expired. Everything I had worked for to take this trip — the partner expired my points.

When we put our program together, we vowed to never expire points. We know how busy travel advisors are. We know they’re attending conferences, working with clients, doing FAM trips. They don’t always have the luxury of being able to vacation when they want. With our program, the points never expire. You bank your points for as long as you want until you’re ready to use them.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s actually really cool. There are some travel advisors hitting it hard full time, and there are also travel advisors doing this as supplemental income or just getting their business started. That’s a great thing to know — you can build those points up and have a great two-week vacation somewhere down the road. That’s pretty motivating.

 

Willie Fernandez: Since we launched the program, we’ve had close to 120 travel advisors take advantage of it since April of 2023. We have a good number right now that already have their 2026 vacations booked. They’ve cashed in their points. They’re heading to the Caribbean, to Europe — taking full advantage of the program and going on free villa vacations.

 

Andy Ogg: And these points are on top of the 10% commission you’re offering agents?

 

Willie Fernandez: This is on top of the 10%. This is on top of the bonus commission. In fact, right now for the month of May, we’re doubling the points. We want to get you to that villa vacation twice as fast.

 

Andy Ogg: I bet anyone listening or watching this is going, “Man, I’m gonna go check out the Rental Escapes website.” If somebody wanted to get started with you guys today — maybe they haven’t heard of you, maybe this is some completely new concept for them — how do they get started with you, Willie?

 

Willie Fernandez: I’m always going to recommend visit RentalEscapes.com. At the very top there’s a link that says “Travel Advisors.” That is your portal. Click on that link. Toward the bottom of the page there’s a section that says “Register Now.” Register for a free account. That’s going to get you into my email database where I send out a monthly email for FAM trips, bonus commissions, promotions, marketing material, etc. It also automatically enrolls you in the rewards program. There’s no cost to join — it’s free.

On that travel advisor portal, just above the register section, we have our award-winning marketing program, which we proudly refer to as “Your Keys to Success.” On there I have pre-recorded webinars — you can watch the ones we have here with Travel Professional News.

We also have an unbranded website you can share with your clients. There’s no logo, no phone number — completely unbranded. So you can safely and securely share any villa in our portfolio with your clients.

I have the link to Wednesdays with Willie. You can register for 15-minute appointments with me. I do it every Wednesday from 2 to 5 p.m. — I open up my calendar. I can talk to you about working with Rental Escapes, marketing the villas, selling the villas, taking advantage of all our marketing collateral.

All the marketing collateral lives under the Marketing Resources section. Everything from social media images, Instagram reels, videos. We even have our collection of digital magazines we call Reimagined. Those are also unbranded — you can share them to Facebook, email them to your clients, post them to a closed Facebook group, add them to a Linktree on your Instagram.

My favorite issue is the Spain issue. If you visit the website, look at the magazines, go to the Spain issue and turn to page 50, which is the flamenco section. Take a look at the magazines — they’re full of content, full of villa product. They were designed specifically for you to share with your clients. They have questions, the how-to-book process, why a villa, villa product, experiences, immersive content about the destination. And my favorite — they have a local recipe. In Turks and Caicos we talk about conch. In Spain, paella. In the Dominican Republic, mofongo, which is my favorite dish. We’ve even had clients ask their chef in the villa to make that dish they read about in the magazine.

 

Andy Ogg: That’s tons of information. The unbranded assets are really useful — that saves the advisor time not having to save all the images and put them together. They can just send the link and the client can look through. That’s really genius.

 

Willie Fernandez: We just launched — we have 21 destination magazines. The plan initially was 15, but in talking to advisors and showing them the magazine, they’d say, “Well, how about this destination? How about that destination?” So 15 became 21.

Over the course of building the 21, advisors said, “Well, I do weddings — is there a magazine I can give my clients about having a wedding at a villa?” So we created the Weddings magazine. We have a lot of travel advisors who specialize in pickleball and golf. They asked, “Is there a pickleball and golf magazine I can send to clients?” So we created a sports magazine that will do pickleball, tennis, golf, and ski. We just finished production on that magazine — it’s now being digitized and will go up on the marketing resources page soon. There are four other magazines we’re developing, all based on feedback from our travel partners.

 

Andy Ogg: They speak, you listen. That’s how it should be. It’s so great that you guys are working with the agency, giving them every tool they need to succeed.

Every single time we talk, I want to get off this phone and go talk to my wife — “All right, let’s put together a vacation fund. We’re going to go stay in a rental.”

 

Willie Fernandez: Wait, hold on a second. You’re not going to put together the vacation. You and your wife are going to tell me where you want to go. We’re going to put it together. You don’t have to worry. Your relaxation starts now. We’re going to take care of it all for you. And your girls are going to have the most unbelievable time.

 

Andy Ogg: I know they would. I have a 12, almost 8, and almost 2. They’re at the stage where they want to go out and have some fun. So expect a phone call in the future, Willie.

Is there anything else you want to talk about before we head on out for the day?

 

Willie Fernandez: Andy, I just want to say thank you to you, to Joni, and to the entire team at Travel Professional News. You’re one of our closest partners. Above all, I consider you all one of our closest friends in the industry. The level of support that you, Joni, Jesse, and everybody at Travel Professional News gives me and every member of Rental Escapes — we’re blessed by it, and it’s something we cherish.

When you reached out to me about having this conversation, I canceled my appointment. I said, “If Andy’s calling, we’re going to sit down and chat.” I love the partnership and the friendship we have. I love the fun we have when we do the webinars. I can’t wait to see what else we’re going to be doing in the future. From myself and all of us at Rental Escapes, thank you. I love what you guys are doing for the industry, for the advisors. You’ve got a lot of things in the works — you guys are doing some really innovative things, and it’s pretty impressive.

 

Andy Ogg: We try. We’re small but mighty, and we definitely work hard. I appreciate those kind words so much, Will. It really means a lot. Likewise — you guys are fantastic partners, and it’s been an absolute joy to expose your offerings and the amazing experiences you can cultivate to this wonderful group of advisors we speak to on a regular basis.

I really appreciate you taking the time. Sorry about canceling the appointment, but I’m not sorry about what we got here today. I think this is going to be really cool, and I can’t wait to share more of these with the advisors in the future.

 

Willie Fernandez: Amazing. I look forward to it.

 

Andy Ogg: Awesome. Willie, you have a wonderful day. Willie Fernandez with Rental Escapes, and old guy Andy Ogg signing off for the day. Hope you all had a wonderful time, and thanks for joining us in this TPN chat. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for more content like this, or visit us at TravelProfessionalNews.com for more free resources.

 

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Interview conducted by Andy Ogg, Travel Professional News. Guest: Willie Fernandez, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer — Rental Escapes.