Staying power

A chance conversation has grown into a hugely successful business thanks to a focus on core values and positive word of mouth. MyStays owner Elle Knight shares her journey as the short-stay accommodation service moves into the Bay.

photo JESSICA LEE PHOTOGRAPHY

Elle Knight didn’t set out to become a business owner. She was simply looking for a little light relief. With a newborn son, who was born deaf and requiring bilateral cochlear implants, and a husband recovering from a broken leg, things were tight. Then came a message from her cousin: “Want to borrow some DVDs?”

While dropping them off, her cousin mentioned her partner was looking to sell a small property management business in Taupō. He managed eight apartments, but they were ready to move to Vanuatu.

“I said to my husband, ‘I reckon that would be a good gig for me,’” Elle recalls. She saw potential – flexible hours that worked around the kids and enough income to cover essentials.

With no experience but a strong head for business, Elle joined forces with her mother-in-law, Denise, to purchase what was then called Luxury Lakeside Accommodation.

Elle’s years in banking had armed her with valuable systems knowledge and operational know-how – skills that would quietly lay the foundation for the scalable business they would later build.

“I’m very much a jump in and learn how to swim person,” she smiles. “Back then, we didn’t know what success would look like. It was exciting to think we had something that could make a real difference.”

In the early days, they did it all themselves, including the cleaning in the mornings, laundry at home, and manually managing bookings in the afternoons.

“It worked for about six months. But Taupō’s a small town. Word gets around.”

Before long, property owners began knocking. The business grew quickly, driven purely by word of mouth. For the next six years, growth was steady and organic, all based on one simple idea: genuine, high-quality service for both guests and homeowners.

“It got to a stage where we looked at each other one night and thought, ‘How has this happened?’” Elle laughs.

What had happened was remarkable. They’d built a reputation that larger, offshore-run platforms couldn’t match, rooted in care, consistency and personal connection. Property owners felt genuinely supported, and guests returned for the reliably high standard across every property.

When Denise stepped away, Elle and her husband took over completely. But they were fielding a new kind of request. Guests and owners alike asked if their services were available outside Taupō. The answer, eventually, became MyStays.

Launched in January 2024 as a sister brand to Lakeside Accommodation, MyStays was created to grow the business while maintaining the personal touch and high standards that made Lakeside a success.

While Lakeside continues to manage 60 plus properties in Taupō, the brands now work together in both Taupō and Kinloch, with a combined portfolio of over 110 homes.

“Taupō is still our base, but we realised there was a real demand for our kind of service in other regions,” says Elle. “MyStays lets us do that – scale up, while still keeping it personal.”

The two brands have since grown to manage 145 plus properties across New Zealand, including more than 25 homes in the Coromandel’s most sought-after beach destinations.

In every region, the heart of the operation is the same: a local, trusted team providing hands-on care. That’s where the GEM model (short for Guest Experience Manager) comes in. Each GEM is a local, supporting homeowners and guests with boots-on-the-ground knowledge and attention. Taupō and Kinloch have three GEMs working alongside the Lakeside team. The Coromandel is supported by another trio, with more roles in the pipeline as expansion continues.

“It’s really important to us that our service feels local,” Elle explains. “Our GEMs make that possible. They’re not just staff – they’re trusted partners who help us maintain that consistent experience we’re known for.”

That consistency is key. Whether guests book a MyStays property in Auckland, Whangamatā, or Napier, they know exactly what to expect: clean, stylish accommodation and responsive service. The Bay of Plenty is the latest region to join the MyStays map. It wasn’t initially part of Elle’s plan. She believed it was already well-served by boutique operators. But after hearing from multiple property owners dissatisfied with impersonal management companies, she saw room for MyStays to add value.

“It’s a stunning place. I’ve enjoyed family time and attending events here,” Elle says. “It’s vibrant and exciting, with great food and shopping, and it really is a year-round destination.”

Despite its scale, Elle still sees MyStays as a family business at heart. Her team is tight-knit, and many of them have grown within their roles as the company has scaled.

“There’s a real sense of belonging here,” she says. “That gives us an authentic connection to our owners and our guests. We believe in what we do, and when you see that connection happen, it’s pretty special.”

From a borrowed DVD collection to a nationwide property portfolio, Elle Knight’s journey proves that small beginnings can lead to big things.

MYSTAYS.CO.NZ

Let it snow

Flying south for the winter, UNO editor Hayley Barnett attempts to turn her family into thrill-seeking adventure enthusiasts, with mixed results.

Words Hayley Barnett

As far as winter getaways go, you don’t get much better than Queenstown. It’s a hub for skiers, thrill seekers, partiers and foodies, and, although partying was off the agenda this time, it’s the perfect destination for a family’s first ski holiday.

Getting my kids on skis has long been a dream of mine, but with COVID-19 restrictions and the recent debacle that kept our local ski fields closed, my grand plans have never come to fruition. Until now.

This year was the year, I decided. It’d be the year the kids would finally fall in love with snow sports and we’d become one of those families who hit the slopes every winter, toasting marshmallows in front of the fire at the end of a long, enjoyable day skilfully flying down the mountain at top speed. Après ski, here we come.

If you have kids, you can probably guess it didn’t all go completely to plan. Five-year-olds don’t always comply in an environment where everyone is wearing ski masks and wielding large planks around. But I can officially say I have skiers now, and I can also recommend some amazing activities to do in the area on those days you don’t quite make it to the slopes.

OAKS QUEENSTOWN SHORES RESORT

Jumping on the Booking.com app, I came across Oaks Queenstown Shores Resort, serviced apartments on the outskirts of Queenstown with incredible views of Lake Wakatipu. A two-bedroom apartment was
the perfect size for the four of us. With an electric fireplace, fully self-contained kitchen and two bathrooms, it has everything you need when sharing with kids and a snorer. The apartment was huge and meant we didn’t have to venture out to get breakfast. We even stayed at home for dinner one night because it was too cosy to leave. There’s a gym for those who don’t get all their energy out on the mountain, and an inviting reception area with a fireplace, dining room and a bar, overlooking the lake.

CARDRONA SKI RESORT

With friends staying in Wanaka, we decided Cardrona would be a good place to meet up for a couple of days skiing. It was recommended I book lessons for the kids well in advance – and tickets, too, as they were limiting the number of people on the ski fields this year. The winding hour-long drive did make me question our decision not to just book at Coronet Peak or The Remarkables, the much closer options, but it ended up being the best decision of the trip. The smoother, flatter slopes proved to be much less intimidating to my three learner family members (who were expecting the steeper runs of neighbouring mountains), and Cardrona had the most centimetres of snow that week. Score!

Having booked our vacation a week before the school holidays, it meant there were hardly any chairlift lines to wait in. I managed to get a heap of runs in that first day, despite the visibility being somewhat dismal.

Luckily, for our second day at Cardrona, the weather had improved. The sun was peaking out and we’d had a large dump of snow overnight, replacing slush with powder. Having learned from the previous day, I dropped the kids off at their lessons, pockets stuffed with lollies (top tip to convince small – and big – kids to do anything) and took off up the mountain again.

By the end of day two, Poppy was flying down from the top, as I’d hoped, and Oscar had learned to avoid crashing into anyone who ventured into his eyeline. Jumping on the bus back down to our rental car, we were soon on our way to the Cardrona Hotel for some well-deserved pub grub and drinks.

TRANSPORT

If you want to get the most out of your Queenstown family holiday, a reliable vehicle is a non-negotiable. Enabling travellers to seamlessly plan their travel, Booking.com offers much more than just accommodation and is a one-stop solution offering a wide range of travel services such as car hire without ever having to leave the platform or app. We easily secured a mid-sized Toyota Corolla via the app. I added booster seats for the kids and chains for the wheels. Pick up was easy. We caught a ride with the Snap Rentals van from the airport and 15 minutes later we were in our car and heading off to our accommodation.

CARDRONA HOTEL RESTAURANT & BAR

A five-minute drive from the turn-off up to Cardrona Ski Resort is one of New Zealand’s oldest hotels and one of only two remaining buildings from the Cardrona Valley gold rush era. These days, it’s most well known for its après ski pub food and drinks and its warm and cosy atmosphere. It’s the perfect place to take the kids, with plenty of room to run around outside, featuring a playground and a giant outdoor fireplace. There are bags of marshmallows, which we purchased a few of, after discovering Oscar had devoured the first bag before we even made it over to the fireplace. We can highly recommend the loaded wedges and the seafood chowder, both washed down with some local gin from the Cardrona Distillery across the road.

PUZZLING WORLD, WANAKA

One of the highlights for all of us was Puzzling World. Yes, we had to travel for an hour from Queenstown, but boy, was it worth it. I had booked tickets through Booking.com when securing our accommodation
months ago, which forced us out of our cosy, warm beds on a non-ski day. By the time we got there we knew we’d made the right decision. 

The family-run attraction started with a wooden maze in 1973 and evolved into a science museum that has become famous across the country – and internationally. Home to the world’s first multi-level “mega maze”, Puzzling World offers a challenging course that takes around an hour to complete (well, it did for us, anyway). Participants must reach all four towers located in four corners of the maze. The kids were the perfect age for it and no one noticed they’d been running around for an hour. 

The Illusion Rooms inside the museum provided hours of entertainment. The slightly nauseating Tilting Room was a favourite for the kids, as was the Ames Room, where they suddenly outgrew us adults, becoming giants to our dwarfed bodies. Afterwards we headed out to the idyllic Lake Wanaka, just a five-minute drive from Puzzling World, to recover from all the excitement.

ARROWTOWN

On our way back home we decided to stop at the little historic village of Arrowtown for dinner. Proving to be just as pretty at nighttime as it is during the day, we took our time wandering up and down the town centre’s main drag, overwhelmed by the many dining choices on offer. We settled on Bendix Stables – a “watering hole and food emporium” built in 1873 as a stable to keep local politician Bendix Hallenstein’s horses. We had the top floor to ourselves where we devoured giant burgers and toasted marshmallows for s’mores.

KAWARAU RIVER JET BOAT TOUR

On our last day, we headed into Queenstown for one more adventure – the Kawarau River Jet Boat Tour. It popped up as a recommendation on Booking.com and was super easy to add as a last-minute addition
to our itinerary. There are two tours to choose from – a 20-minute joy ride around the lake or an hour-long tour up the river. We went for the hour, which was filled with thrills and not-too-many spills, thankfully. The kids loved the build-up of suspense when our driver raised his hand in warning each time he slammed on the brakes for a heart-stopping 360-degree spin. The scenery became more and more impressive the further down the river we spun. An exciting attraction for families with just
the right amount of thrill for the littlies.

To book your holiday to Queenstown, simply download the booking.com app and get planning!