Andreas King-Geovanis remembers what it’s like to be displaced by a tragic event. When terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, the 31-year-old CEO of Miami-based short-term rental company Sextant Stays was a child living with his family in a high rise about five blocks away.
The family had to evacuate and stayed in hotels and on friends’ couches for a month.
The June 24 partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, north of Miami Beach, evoked Andreas’s memories of that time and deep empathy for survivors.
Serendipitously, he had just signed an agreement to manage a vacant 17-unit property about 5 miles from the disaster site. The property was scheduled to open as short-term rentals in August but still needed about 40 days of work to be habitable.
Rallying to help
Before the end of the day on June 24, he called his staff of 165 to a meeting and pitched his idea of offering the units rent-free for the month of July to survivors and families waiting for news of residents who are still missing.
“We were one of a handful of people in the city that had these resources and had a building similar to this. So, there is no way we were going to hesitate. We knew we had to take action immediately,” Andreas said.
“We were totally unprepared to open 40 days early, but we said, we’re going to make a commitment to get the entire building ready over the weekend.”
The entire staff rallied to paint walls, move in furniture, buy new appliances, turn on utilities, and set up 17 mobile hotspots because the internet service was not immediately available.
“When we did get electric, we noticed that some of the refrigerators weren’t working. That was kind of on the owners’ maintenance punch list. The dishwashers weren’t working so that same night at 9 o’clock we went to BrandsMart and loaded up our company pickup trucks and just got everything over there,” Andreas said. “It was just such a big effort and such a resilient team, and we got it all done.”
The team worked through the night and readied the entire building in just 48 hours. Fifteen families responded to Andreas’s offer on social media and are now living in the 17 units at the property.
Short-term rental stay abroad inspires a future in hospitality
Andreas founded Sextant Stays in 2014 and grew from one property to about 500, half of which are located in South Florida. The company also manages short-term rentals and vacation rentals in Fort Lauderdale and New Orleans.
The idea of starting the business sprung from his time studying abroad through the Semester at Sea program, where he also met his wife. The program involved living on a ship with about 800 other college students and stopping at 18 different ports. The students could go on their own travels during each stop. Andreas had a circle of about 20 friends who wanted to travel together. Hotels were too expensive and not conducive to group travel, so they opted for a short-term rental.
It was then he realized the magic of this form of hospitality in private accommodations, so shortly after he graduated from the University of Miami, he bought his first place with money he had saved up while attending college on an academic scholarship. In 2014, he officially founded Sextant Stays.
A test of company culture
Andreas said his effort to help residents of Champlain Towers South is an extension of one of his core company values, the idea that empathy is the foundation of any hospitality business. In order to please guests, you have to be able to empathize with their needs and feelings, he said.
“It’s so easy to have [company] culture when the times are good, and but really culture is what you do in your darkest of days and your most dire moments,” he said.
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