5 minutes with hospitality investor Nick Falcone

Nick Falcone came up with the idea for his vacation rental startup, Rentyl Resorts, over the dinner table with his dad, developer Art Falcone, and his brothers.

Orlando-based Rentyl, which Falcone and his brothers Dan and Matthew launched in 2018, has inked partnerships with major resorts including Margaritaville, Jack Nicklaus’ The Bear’s Den, and Hilton properties.

Rentyl, which is part of the Falcones’ NDM Hospitality, has more than 400 employees and operates in 25 markets, managing 10,000 rental properties. A majority are in Florida — including Hilton hotels in Fort Lauderdale and Miami — and half of Rentyl’s properties are abroad, Falcone said. Rentyl is also looking to close out a $25 million fundraising round soon. Major investors include billionaire Vinnie Viola, Equity Resources CEO Jack Fiorela and Land South principal Patrick Marino.

Falcone, a founding franchisee of BurgerFi who owns the Miami-Dade territory for the fast food chain, also plans to open a BurgerFi/Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza combined location at Miami Worldcenter, a master-planned mixed-use development that his father is co-developing.

The Real Deal spoke with Falcone about the startup, partnering with developers, and working with his dad.

How did you come up with the idea for Rentyl Resorts?

My father’s a developer, and he never really sold product at a vacation home resort. It’s always been to buyers, the people who actually live in the house. Orlando is the first time that every single buyer was pretty much asking ‘How do I rent it? How do I make money off of it?’ So that conversation was just very intriguing, and it led my brothers and [me] to study the industry and realize that we felt that there were holes in regards to how people were doing it, ways that we could enhance the vacation home industry and take it to another level.

Did you always plan to work in the industry?

Despite the fact that [my dad] was really successful in real estate, he would tell us, ‘You have to create your own name and your own reputation.’ And so we would always have interest in what he did and what he does, and a lot of excitement of wanting to learn about real estate, but at the same time, do it in a way that created that identity for ourselves. With what we’re doing, we’re really excited because it really gives us the best of both worlds. We get to work closely with him. And we get to work closely with other developers and really get our feet into the development space. But we’re able to combine that with tech and hospitality.

What stands out about Rentyl’s tech? You said that users can earn points in Rentyl’s loyalty program that can be used for dining, shopping, etc. But it can also be used toward a down payment on a home purchase. Can you explain that?

Let’s say you’re making transactions through the program, you’re going on vacation, you’re going out to eat and you’re accruing points. You’ll have the ability to go onto the platform, you’ll see houses or apartment rentals that are available. If you have enough points to put toward the down payment, then you would have the ability to do so. You know, if not, then you have the ability to see how [many] points you need to be able to put toward the down payment. Right now, you would have to have enough points for the entire down payment. But we’re also working on something to where it could just be points going toward a partial down payment. We’re going to be talking with tons of developers around the country.

On the business side, we work with people that use hotel systems, and we work with people that use home systems for their property management. And we have an adapter that allows us to take that inventory in and push it out in unique ways, in essence that other technologies wouldn’t be able to do.

How is the hospitality market performing?

Last year exceeded everyone’s expectations in a major way, it was much stronger than pre-Covid. I would say in talking with most people, we are starting to see the numbers come down more to reality, but again, still in a very healthy place. Obviously, the looming potential of a recession is definitely weighing on a lot of people’s strategies. But it’d be interesting to see where that all goes with the midterms and where the economy goes. As of right now, we haven’t seen anything drop off a cliff.

How would Rentyl fare in a recession?

We do anticipate that a downturn in the economy actually would help us pick up more partnerships — more people will be wanting to find new ways to get bookings. We are higher [priced] than the average Airbnb, based on the fact that we’re providing more of a full-service, resort experience with standards and everything else. But we’re still seeing that when you break down our pricing on a bedroom-by-bedroom price point, it’s typically a little bit lower per bedroom than a hotel. One of the things that we’re building in our tech is the ability for installment payments. That’s something that we believe will be very helpful for consumers, especially as we potentially go through a recession.