I’m getting really excited for the inaugural Vacation Rental Design Summit, taking place Thursday, April 20th and Friday, April 21st, 2 days before the official start of Spring 2023 High Point Market, at Congdon Yards in High Point, North Carolina.

Congdon Yards is a wonderful example of adaptive reuse, something especially important in today’s world of design. It used to be a hosiery mill. When you consider that this month, April, is #EarthMonth and that #EarthDay2023, April 22nd, falls on the opening day of High Point Market, this takes on special significance.

I created the image below, showing some of the beautiful interiors of this exciting event space, designed by Barbour Spangle Design out of High Point.

Why is the Vacation Rental Summit at Congdon Yards sold out? One simple reason is shown on the image below. Getting involved in vacation rental design, as a designer, is a very lucrative addition to any designer’s business’s revenue stream.

Being co-sponsored by High Point Market Authority and High Point x Design, the Summit kicks off with an early evening mixer at Pandora’s Manor on Wed. April 19th from 5-7 pm. The Summit will unpack the business of vacation rental design. Featuring presentations and panel discussions by 25 speakers, educational topics include sourcing, logistics, vacation rental design’s impact on profitability and ROI, enhancing the guest experience, technology for short-term rentals, designing for accessibility, storytelling and branding, and trends in the industry.

Let’s dive in a little further now to some specifics of the Vacation Rental Design Summit.

The Backstory On The Vacation Rental Design Summit

The Vacation Rental Design Summit was the brainchild of one of my friends, Jessica Duce - a vacation rental designer whose home base is The Woodlands, TX, shown in the image below.

Jessica travels all over designing vacation rental properties for her clients, often adding little humorous surprise touches that give her clients and their guests a smile. You can see many of them by following Jessica on her Instagram feeds, linked to at the bottom of this post.

Jessica was joined in her idea by her onsite production partner, Jane Dagmi, who lives in High Point. Jane is the former editor in chief of Designers Today magazine and is now the executive director of High Point x Design, an organization dedicated to making the city of High Point a year around design destination for interior designers and their clients.

When High Point Market Authority heard about this idea, they decided to become an official partner with High Point x Design so they could work together to bring vacation rental designers to the Summit as well as designers who have an interest in both vacation rental design as well as High Point Market, but who may never have come to High Point Market before.

Together, Jane and Jessica have onboarded all 25 {!} of the speakers and dozens of sponsors and have spent countless hundreds of hours organizing and planning all aspects of the logistics for what is sure to be an incredible inaugural event.

[ NOTE 1: Jessica was a prior guest on my Meet The Members - a Zoom conversation series I held with design leaders who are part of my private Facebook community for interior designers, Design Wealth.

After that Zoom, I wrote a post with my 5 top takeaways from our conversation about vacation rental design which - in case you can’t attend the #VRDSummit or are seeing this post after the Summit takes place - you can read here. ]

Jessica will be sharing even more of her top tips as one of the speakers at the Vacation Rental Design Summit and again when she speaks on a vacation rental design panel at Universal Furniture’s Learning Center during #HPMKT.

[ NOTE 2: Jessica will be one of the 10 designers joining me on #TTweekendretreat May 19 -21 - a special 2.5 day girls getaway trip to New Braunfels, TX that I am co-hosting with the Thompson Traders family and which the Thompson Traders family is underwriting for 10 of my Texas based designer friends.

[ I think she will need the relaxation after this and we have plans to make sure she gets it!]

Jane Dagmi, below, whose energy and passion for the short term rental market, for the design and furniture industries and for High Point, North Carolina , is transforming the city and the business landscape there as I type.

Here are all of the speakers that the attendees will learn from at the Vacation Rental Design Summit. Meet them all, read their short bios and follow them on Instagram, by clicking through on the link at the bottom of this post.

What a hive of knowledge!

I am especially pleased to have been invited to be a *headliner* speaker as you saw in the opening image, too.

What does being a headliner mean? It means we will each be delivering our own presentation to the attendees.

My presentation will be on:

Content and Captions: How To Create Them To Attract Ideal Vacation Rental Investors and Brand Collaborations.

As part of this presentation, I will be discussing the use of AI [ artificial intelligence] tools like MidJourney, which I wrote about on this tutorial post — which gives designers and anyone interested step by step instructions on how to use MidJourney for visual ideation.

Speaking of AI, I will delivering another paid workshop with Annilee Waterman on Thursday, June 1st from 2-4 pm CT on The Metaverse and MidJourney: The Impacts And Revenue Opportunities.

In this workshop. I will be going into more detail on the text prompts necessary to get the images I’ve been producing on MidJourney like the ones in the tutorial post and like the one below.

It’s $149.00 and if you’d like to sign up for that, you can do so on this link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/midjourney-and-the-metaverse-new-revenue-opportunities-tickets-615206197297

One of my company’s current clients, Tiffany Cassidy, principal of US Virgin Islands based, Lagnappe Interiors, shown below. will also be speaking on two panels at the Vacation Rental Design Summit. Tiffany and her husband, David, have lived full time on St. Thomas for the past 20 years and have had their design firm for that long, as well.

Employing a team of six, they are well known as the #1 interior design/vacation rental design firm in the #USVI.

In addition to speaking, Tiffany will be doing a fun activation with one of the VRD sponsors, Gat Creek, a brand that TIffany has been collaborating with on photo shoot stylings and IG takeovers.

Here’s a great post on Tiffany’s site about her photo styling session with Gat Creek:

https://www.lagnappe.com/behind-the-scenes-at-the-gat-creek-photoshoot/

Gat Caperton, the owner of Gat Creek, is a long time member of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, and well known for his commitment to sustainable sourcing and business practices. Tiffany and her clients care deeply about protecting the island ecosystem in the Caribbean and her firm specifies a lot of Gat Creek’s furnishings.

Tiffany also has a series of VERY valuable digital downloads available for vacation rental investors to purchase on her site, here.

Below is the pool area of one of the residences Tiffany and her team designed. I’m ready to go take a dip…

Follow Tiffany on Instagram here, to see more of her team’s beautiful work and to get inspired to book a vacation rental in the Carribean for an island vacation for yourself this year!

[ NOTE: Tiffany does not rent the vacation rentals she and her team design. Her clients decide, separately, who they want to use for property management services ].

As promised, here’s the link where you can see the agenda, and meet and follow the speakers:

https://hpxd.org/vrdsummit

I know I speak for all of us involved in this that we are looking forward to seeing you and meeting you, if you are an attendee.

Be ready for 2.5 days of learning EVERYTHING you will need to know about how to make vacation rental design a lucrative part of your design business and to have a lot of fun meeting a fabulous group of people!

Leslie Carothers, Principal
Savour Partnership

A digital marketing innovation agency, specializing in creatively connecting interior designers and brands with leads and national opportunities that move their businesses powerfully forward, faster.

Top 40 Most Inspiring Women In Home, as named by Home Furnishings News magazine.
Winner, Designers Today magazine’s 2022 Readers Ranking Award for Best PR and Marketing Agency