The Story Behind Consolia and Why We're Rebuilding Software for Short-Term Rental Hosts
Learn the story behind Consolia, our mission, and how we're building a smarter platform for self-managed short-term rental hosts.
A Platform for the Hosts Who Built the Industry: Self-Managed Hosts
The short-term rental and vacation rental ecosystem was born from independence. It was built by self-managed hosts who opened their homes, developed their craft, and turned hosting into a profession.
But as the industry has scaled, the systems around it haven't kept up. The tools get noisier, platforms more clunky, and the people who built the industry have been pushed to the sidelines. Self-managed hosts have been left to stitch together fragmented software and systems that were never designed for them, sacrifice a quarter of their income to management companies, or work around business-focused platforms that simply don't understand how they operate.
We have lived every part of that shift. As operators, technologists, and industry contributors, we built internal tooling, led compliance initiatives, and optimised portfolios of vacation rentals at scale. And through it all, one thing became clear: although independent hosts are powering the industry, the infrastructure is no longer built to serve them.
This failure isn't just a tooling problem. It is a systemic one, a foundational disconnect between how self-managed hosts actually work and what the industry is offering them in return.
So we made a decision: to take on the foundational challenge of rebuilding the system from the ground up, and to create the platform self-managed hosts should have had all along. That's what Consolia is, not just a better product, but a new framework for the future of independent hosting and short-term rental management.
What We're Building: A Smarter Platform for Short-Term Rental Hosts
We are building Consolia for the hosts who have spent too long working around systems that weren't built with them in mind. The ones juggling turnovers between meetings, rewriting listing copy late at night, adjusting pricing across three different browser tabs or Airbnb dashboards, troubleshooting guest issues on the go, and managing it all without meaningful support.
Consolia is a Host Assistance Platform, a new kind of vacation rental operating system designed from the ground up for self-managed hosts.
At its core, it's an intelligent, context-aware system that doesn't just automate repetitive tasks. It interprets, adapts, and supports decision-making in real time.
It knows when to step in and when to stay out of the way. It learns your property, reads booking signals, understands guest sentiment, and surfaces what actually matters before it becomes a problem. Like having your own personal assistant who knows exactly when to act.
And when something truly needs a human touch, you can tap into expert human support, only if and when you want to. That means:
A system that understands your listing, anticipates booking patterns, and helps you stay ahead on pricing, occupancy, and guest experience
One unified workspace to manage operations, guest communications, booking revenue, dynamic pricing and local compliance, all working in sync
Smart alerts, context-aware insights, and proactive automations that remove noise and spotlight what matters
Built-in, on-demand access to experts who manage guest support, pricing and content optimisation, only when you choose to tap in
This isn't software built for property management companies, and it's certainly not a management company asking for 25 percent of your revenue. It's a purpose-built solution for the operators at the centre of the industry.
We are still building it, but every design choice, every feature, and every line of code is shaped by one belief: Self-managed hosts deserve a short-term rental platform that reflects how they actually work. One that's clear, flexible, and entirely in their control.
Why We're the Ones Rebuilding Short-Term Rental Software
Our team has been in this industry long enough to feel its fractures, not as spectators, but as operators.
In the time before Consolia, our team facilitated over 30,000 guest stays, worked with hundreds of hosts, spoken to thousands more, and studied their challenges, workarounds, and day-to-day realities.
This depth of experience exposed the core problem: short-term rental software adds complexity instead of removing it. We're not guessing, we've lived it, studied it, and now we are building the solution.
We have rebuilt workflows where none existed, developed infrastructure when existing systems couldn't keep up, and contributed to industry bodies working to make hosting fairer, more accessible, and better prepared for what comes next.
That experience is why we are building Consolia. Not as another product chasing growth, but as a deliberate effort to rebuild the infrastructure hosting depends on. With clearer systems, smarter support, and software that truly reflects how real vacation rental hosts operate.
The only way to build something that truly serves hosts is to build it with them.
We are building Consolia with the people it's for, in the open, through conversation and in real collaboration. Hosts shape the roadmap, feedback drives what ships and community input doesn't just validate, it leads.
What's Ahead for Consolia, and the Hosts Building It With Us
As development continues, we are inviting self-managed hosts to help shape what comes next.
Inside The Consolidators, our private Slack community, you'll collaborate directly with our team, influence key product decisions, and see their input reflected in the platform's evolution.
This isn't a marketing group or a waiting room. It's a working circle, a space for operators to connect, speak openly, test ideas, and see their input reflected in the platform's evolution. It's also a place to connect with other operators, share what's working, and get honest guidance from a team that's spent years in the trenches.
Members will receive early access, free expert guidance, and lifetime perks are reserved for those who help build the foundations.
If that sounds like something worth building, we'd love to have you involved.
We're not just building for independent hosts: we're building with them, to change the system that left them behind. This is where the reset begins. Join the rebuild.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some of the most common questions we receive about Consolia and our mission to build better tools for self-managed hosts.