Candid Conversation with Merilee Karr shares her journey and her contribution through UnderTheDoormat.
Q. Brief us about the CEO/Founder of the company.
Merilee Karr is the CEO and Founder of UnderTheDoormat – an award-winning luxury short-term rental company. Merilee founded the company in 2014 after a successful global career at Shell. Her vision for UnderTheDoormat is to enable modern travelers to enjoy the comfort of a home with the professional service of a hotel. They offer two approaches, the UnderTheDoormat fully managed model, a “distributed hotel”, and Hospiria, integrated technology for property portfolio owners and managers to access the sector, projected by PWC to be worth $330bn in Europe by 2025.
Merilee regularly features on television and radio including BBC News and Sky News and speaks at industry events, including the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF), and Expedia’s annual global conference. She has been recognized with several awards including JP Morgan’s Top Female Powered Companies in 2021, and Business Woman of the Year in 2019. She has also led UnderTheDoormat to win Industry accolades such as Travolution, Best for Staying 2020, Builtworld, European Prop-Tech Company 2020 and Best Online Travel Agency (OTA) in 2021.
Q. Being a successful Business leader, what difficulties and challenges do you face? What keeps you motivated?
The biggest challenge for me was to understand the importance of patience while growing my business. The hardest thing is if you are a driven person, you want everything to happen quickly. The challenge in building a great business and reputation is that it takes time. You must have patience which is something you are forced to learn. I always wanted to build a strong company as well as growing it quickly, and since we have been begun, we have grown the company to be well beyond its years in maturity (it probably helps that I come from one of the most respected global companies, so my expectations are high!), which is a testament to the strong structures we have in place. There’s a delicate balance where on the one hand, you need to do things properly because your company’s reputation depends on it, but on the other, you want things done fast so your company can grow quickly. You can’t have sustainable growth without substance so we are always walking that balance beam to come out ahead in the medium to long term.
Q. Could you please share your noted milestones, accomplishments throughout your journey so far along with company highlights and achievements under your leadership.
For me it’s got to be the awards the company has won. This is what brings the team together and motivates us and seeing that all occur is what I regard as an achievement. I’ve won awards for entrepreneur of the year in 2019 and so on but, it’s mostly about the team and most recently we won a Global industry Award for Best Online Booking Platform for our Homes for NHS scheme which we launched during Covid-19. Last year we also won a Travolution Award for Best for Staying which is a highly respected travel award. It’s amazing because it shows not just that we have a great idea but that we are delivering on what it is that we promise to our customers. When we won that award that was a massive accolade to all the hard work that everyone has put in from day one. Other awards we won in 2020 included Altovita Best Property Management Company EMEA and Best Demonstration of Duty of Care.
I am also the Chair for industry body, UK Short Term Accommodation Association, this is something that I am really passionate about because it’s about helping professionalize and grow the industry in the most responsible way in the UK and around the world. This includes the launch of TrustedStays, an accredited short term accommodation solution for government and business travellers. I have also worked with BEIS and HMRC on sharing economy policies, and MHCLG to develop industry-wide policy to support a balanced regulatory environment for the growing industry.
Q. Please tell us about the business model you follow and the services you provide that makes the brand unique in the midst of cut throat competition.
UnderTheDoormat Group is a prop-tech company that empowers property owners, portfolio owners and property companies to generate higher income through the short-term rental industry. Our mission is to help every property fulfil its potential every day, by to connecting them with quality guests through our 3 products.
Firstly, we operate short term rentals for those who don’t have the capabilities themselves. UnderTheDoormat has over 300 units across London, including the flagship aparthotel 3 Sloane Gardens operated on behalf of Cadogan Estates. Secondly, we distribute for providers who can provide quality hospitality, but need help with distribution and technology. The tech landscape in short term rentals is hugely fragmented, and our B2B SaaS platform Hospiria integrates the tech stack so property companies and managers have a single ready-made platform so they can focus on what they’re good at – hosting guests. And finally, our TrustedStays platform is the world’s first platform which connects professional home rentals with Government and Corporate travellers. Until now, short-term rentals haven’t been able to enter this world, and we’re connecting it. All three products enable owners to earn higher return from short term accommodation.
Q. Please share the most memorable and remarkable moment of your life.
As an American, it was coming to Europe to live for the first time. It opened up a whole new world of travel and experiences and means that I could later set up my business in one of the most global cities in the world, London!
Q. Where do you see yourself and the company in future? Or, what is your goal to mark the uniqueness in future?
I aim to grow UnderTheDoormat into a global business whilst helping transforming the sector through professionalizing it. The vision is to do for the short-term rental industry what the global hotel brands did to the hotel industry back in the 1950s. Today, we are a very disaggregated sector, but my vision is to consolidate and keep the authenticity in the industry by supporting entrepreneurs to grow their companies through technology and access to new markets. I don’t want the industry to become a couple of companies taking over as that would lose the beauty and diversity of our industry. I want the sector to consolidate in a structurally different way, where all the entrepreneurs who have great businesses have full control, and we create that umbrella for them to make it easier and to help them grow faster.
Q. Advise for the budding women in tech who are trying to embark in the same field.
Go for it! You’re never going to make it happen if you don’t try. People often consider the risk and think of all the ‘why nots’ and not about the ‘why you should’ do it, because what’s the worst that can happen? You fail, and once you accept that fact things become a lot easier. The likelihood is that if things don’t work out you can go and get another job anyway. If you don’t try you’ll never know and you wont of had the opportunity to create a change and achieve something. The baby steps you take everyday will help you build something and every successful entrepreneur has gone through those baby steps. Take the first leap into the unknown as you can only build something amazing brick by brick and you have to lay the first brick for your dream to be possible!
Q. What is the one thing that is acting as your motivational tool? Or, who is your role model and how the person inspires and motivates you?
The thing that matters most is seeing that we’re making progress. When there are exciting things that the team and I can get involved with and contribute to, that’s more motivating than anything else. It’s been really interesting over the last year as you would think what with the pandemic that business would have been slow but actually it has been a building year for us where we can focus on Hospiria and TrustedStays. And probably most memorably, at the height of the first lockdown we switched our focus to a new initiate Homes for NHS, which was a charitable exercise that provided free accommodation to NHS staff who needed safe places to stay during the pandemic, in total we supported the industry in donated over £20m of free stays. This then turned into a commercial model as TrustedStays when Innovate UK called for Covid Innvoations that have commerical potential to be selected. It’s about seizing opportunities that are in front of you as they come because the only difference between a successful entrepreneur and everyone else is that you take the opportunities you can and make them a reality.
