Stewarding Homes, Trust, and Legacy in Hospitality with Tom Goodwin

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Well, welcome back to the show everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest who we'll introduce in a moment. So, hospitality is often measured through occupancy, revenue, and reviews, and I've been in the industry for a while, and we used to say heads in beds, I think was one of the phrases. But there's also something deeper at play, and that's trust. When a homeowner hands over the keys to a vacation property, they're not simply outsourcing a transaction, they're entrusting someone with an investment, it's a family retreat, a place often filled with personal history.
And when guests return to that same destination year after year, they are not only choosing a property, they're returning to that feeling of care, familiarity, and trust that things are going to run smoothly. And so today, we are exploring Stewarding Homes, Trust, and Legacy in Hospitality. And Tullio, introduce our special guest.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:18)
It will be my pleasure. Our guest today is Tom Goodwin. He's the Steward and CEO of Mountain Laurel Chalet.
Mountain Laurel Chalet has been family owned since 1972, and it's the original vacation rental company in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Tom became the second generation Steward in 2012 But his education and hospitality began decades earlier after marrying into the founding family. He learned the business by watching homeowners treated as partners, guests welcomed with genuine care and relationships built one conversation at a time. Today, Tom is preparing the company for its next chapter while protecting the integrity that has defined it for more than 50 years. Tom, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast. Looking forward to our conversation today.

**Tom Goodwin** (2:10)
I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me today.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:14)
Tom, so you've said that Mountain Laurel Chalet doesn't manage portfolios and manages homes. What's the difference and why does that distinction matter so much?

**Tom Goodwin** (2:24)
Wow.
First of all, the vacation rental market has been around for quite a long time. Really supersedes a lot of the big name operators that are out there that you might go to automatically call the house by the name of that online marketing tool that gets you access to all those homes. We started in 1972 and the important part of that was that we started really as an overflow of taking care of people. The hotels were the only option for people to stay in in Gatlinburg. It's the most visited national park in the US. In the 70s, families were coming down to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It's a drive-to destination. They'd get to the hotel and they didn't have cell phones, they didn't have internet, they didn't have texting, so they made their reservations by mail or by phone call weeks in advance. Maybe that hotel was double booked and they get there and there's no room. The hotel owner would call my in-laws who lived right up the street and said, do you have any extra room in your house? Because we've got this people that came and we have no room in the end. Oldest story out there.
So the vacation rental industry really was for Gatlinburg was birthed around that time in the late 60s, early 70s. I think it has changed dramatically since then in the 54, 55 years, especially with the influx of technology and ease of access of getting properties listed online in 5 or 10 minutes, and then voila, you're in business. So I think we as a legacy company, one of the first founders, oldest management company for vacation homes in the state of Tennessee, we have weathered a lot of storms, a lot of industry changes, and a lot of fluctuations. But really, we lean into our founders and the heart of hospitality that they have, which is really established on people trusting us with their homes, with their investment. I have nothing and if I don't have homes on my portfolio. So we manage those homes in a way that honors the owner, and it prepares a place for the guests to have an exceptional vacation experience.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:45)
Tom, you just gave me a flashback to my childhood. My mom in the early 80s had started this business, where she was in the bed and breakfast business.
She ended up writing guidebooks and things like that. But I remember those early days where she had the travel agency in the house there. And oh man, trying to book those places with phone calls, she'd be like calling up one after another. And it's that old school approach that I had long forgotten was just having to hit those phones really hard for her clients to find something.