How Zenstay Boosted Growth While Doubling Its Portfolio — With PriceLabs

Executive Summary

Tommy Wong joined Zenstay as Technical Operations Manager after a career in web hosting and technical support — bringing systems thinking, not hospitality experience, to a portfolio of 25 boutique properties across California's coastal markets and Lake Tahoe. With 148 rooms to manage and a portfolio set to double over the next few years, Tommy needed a revenue management platform he could learn quickly and operate at scale.

PriceLabs became Tommy's first and only revenue management tool — and the results speak for themselves: Zenstay's peak-period ADR increased by 25%. Occupancy has held steady or increased, driving meaningful RevPAR growth across the entire operation.

About Zenstay

Zenstay manages a portfolio of boutique hotels across California's coastal markets — including Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz — and Lake Tahoe. The portfolio currently spans 148 rooms across 25 properties, with another 37-room property set to launch soon.

Each property has its own distinct character. What ties them together is a deliberately personalized, tech-forward experience: contactless check-ins, individual access points for every room, no front desk, and a guest support line for when things need a human touch. The model appeals to both leisure travelers and remote-working corporate guests.

"Guests are looking for something more personal instead of a chain hotel. When they come and visit, they feel a personalized touch." – Tommy Wong, Technical Operations Manager, Zenstay

Challenges Before PriceLabs

Managing 25 boutique properties across geographically diverse markets — from California's coast to Lake Tahoe's mountains — comes with real complexity. For Tommy, the core challenges were:

Coming in without a hospitality background: Tommy joined Zenstay from a career in web hosting and technical support. Revenue management terminology — ADR, RevPAR, pacing — was new territory. He needed a platform that could teach him the discipline as much as automate it.

Juggling occupancy across distinct markets: Each property sits in a market with its own demand patterns, events, and seasonality. Tracking the health of every region simultaneously — and reacting fast enough to local shifts — was the steepest part of the learning curve.

Scaling a growing portfolio: With the portfolio set to double, manual pricing across 25+ properties (and counting) was never going to work. Tommy needed a system that could scale with Zenstay's growth without proportionally scaling the workload.

Different property types, different rules: Zenstay manages a mix of owned and third-party properties — from 300-square-foot studios to multi-room villas and even castle-like properties. Each one needs pricing logic tailored to its specific positioning and inventory.

"When I first saw all the units, I thought — how do you do that? But sometimes you just can't be afraid. You dive in head first." – Tommy Wong

PriceLabs as a Solution

PriceLabs was Tommy's first introduction to revenue management — and the platform's transparency and customizability made it the right fit for someone bringing a systems-thinking mindset to a brand-new discipline.

Key features that made a difference:

Transparent price breakdowns: Tommy's favorite tool is PriceLabs' Multi-Calendar, where hovering over any date breaks down exactly why a price was calculated — seasonality, occupancy adjustments, multi-occupancy percentages, and every other factor in play. For someone who wants to understand the 'why' behind every number, this level of transparency is invaluable.

"PriceLabs' tool tip in the Multi-Calendar breaks down the pricing logic. It gets really granular, which is helpful in terms of understanding as well as explaining." – Tommy Wong

Granular customization at every level: Tommy can tweak multi-occupancy percentage tables, occupancy-based adjustments, and pricing logic at the group level or for individual units — essential for an inventory that ranges from compact studios to multi-room villas.

Base Price Helper for new properties: Every time Zenstay adds a new unit or property, Tommy uses PriceLabs' Base Price Helper to set a starting point informed by surrounding market rates. It's a baseline he can confidently build from — adjusting up or down based on the property's unique positioning.

Pacing reports and KPI tracking: Tommy uses PriceLabs' pacing reports to monitor the health of newly launched properties, layering in the Multi-Calendar's next-30-days occupancy view to see how pricing is fluctuating against demand. This visibility is critical for catching issues early when new properties are still finding their footing.

Automatic occupancy-based adjustments: Across 148 rooms, Tommy can't manually monitor every booking window. PriceLabs' occupancy-based adjustments quietly handle rate movements as occupancy builds — so when a property is sitting at 20–25% occupancy two days out, the platform has already responded.

Onboarding and account management support: Tommy credits his account manager, Aaron, with helping him get up to speed quickly — from learning the terminology to navigating PriceLabs' more advanced features.

"Aaron has been nothing short of helpful in getting me situated with PriceLabs and just learning the terminology." – Tommy Wong

Results

Since implementing PriceLabs, Zenstay has seen significant improvements across the metrics that matter most:

Peak-period ADR up 25% year-over-year: Even as Zenstay doubled the size of its portfolio over the past year, peak-period ADR grew by approximately 25% compared to 2025 — a direct outcome of PriceLabs' dynamic pricing helping set the right rate at the right moment.

"Even though we doubled our portfolio since last year, the ADR has continued to grow along with the expansion. With PriceLabs, it grew by almost 25% compared to 2025" – Tommy Wong

Occupancy held steady or improved: Year-to-date, occupancy levels across the portfolio have stayed the same or increased — meaning the ADR gains translate directly into RevPAR growth, not occupancy trade-offs.

Confident scaling across a doubling portfolio: PriceLabs' automation and customization enable a lean team to manage 25 properties — and prepare to manage twice as many — without sacrificing pricing precision.

A learning platform, not just a pricing tool: For Tommy, PriceLabs has been the platform through which he learned revenue management itself. Its transparency, terminology, and tooling made the discipline accessible to someone with no prior hospitality background.

Looking Ahead

Zenstay is bullish on growth — with plans to double the portfolio over the next few years and continue expanding its tech-forward boutique model. Tommy sees the future of hospitality as a hybrid: more automation on the operational side (contactless check-ins, automated pricing), but always with humans available for the moments when guests need a real person to talk to.

AI will play a role too, helping guests shop smarter and helping operators automate more of the day-to-day. But Tommy is clear: the human touch isn't going anywhere — and neither is the need for tools that empower humans to make better decisions.

"People will still want to communicate with a human and have that human touch in place. AI is a tool — but the real value is in giving people more time to focus on what matters." – Tommy Wong

That balance — automation where it scales, humans where they matter — is exactly the philosophy Zenstay brings to its guest experience, and it's why PriceLabs has become a core part of the company's growth.

"PriceLabs has made it very straightforward and easy to learn, and because it's tech-focused, it allows me to easily adapt." – Tommy Wong