We recently connected with Casey McManus and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Casey, thanks for joining us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

My husband and I purchased an old road-side Motel in Vermont in the winter of 2024. We renovated the property in the spring of 2024, while renovating we documented our journey on social media. We were very fortunate to have one of our videos to hit and go viral. This resulted in a large following of 300K+ followers.

We had really dedicated people in our corner, cheering us on throughout our renovation across the entire country. Due to the fact that we were able to connect with so many individuals, they would often message us and voice that they loved what we were doing with our motel, typically they would never give motels a second look and would always stay in chain hotels. They would love to come stay in our little inn but couldn’t make it to the northeast because they lived on the west coast or the pacific north west, they would ask us for recommendations of inns out there because they didn’t know how to find them.

All while this is happening we are learning to run our own hospitality business. As we made it through the first year of operations we were so fortunate to have so many people find us on social media and book directly with us. However we were also listed on the bigger OTA platforms, like Expedia and Booking.com. The ‘little guys’ like us, need these platforms to get the visibility to the day to day travelers, however they take a big cut of commissions on our bookings and we were paying tens of thousands of dollars to these platforms each month, taking a big hit to our financials.
As we grew on social media we were also able to connect with so many other inn owners who were doing the exact same thing as us, while also feeling the same pain we were, giving away commissions to the OTAs.

Since covid hit there has been a resurgence in the independently owned lodging spaces, such as inns, motels and bed & breakfasts. Young couples, families and individuals are breathing new life into a lot of these outdated properties. As we met other owners and visited other places we were blown away by the hospitality they were providing. We just knew people needed to know about them.

Between our followers asking for recommendations of inns, motels and bed & breakfasts, and the pain we were all feeling in the industry, we just knew there had to be a better way.

So in March 2025 we launched ‘Inndependent Stays’ a booking platform that connects travelers directly with independently owned lodging across North America. Creating a win-win scenario, so the traveler can have a better experience by skipping the middle man, the owner can skip the commissions and people can experience travel the way it was meant to be, real stays, run by real people.

It’s been 6 months since we launched the platform and we are so thrilled about the growth and excitement around it. Over the course of that time, we built the website, reached out to property owners organically on social media, started sharing more content using our audience to advertise and grow the awareness of the platform and even created a community of owners on the back end that supports sharing, learning and growing together in this industry.

We have over 250 properties that we have individually connected with and listed on the platform, and thousands of people that have used the site to book their weekend trips this summer.

Although we are still in early days for this platform we know it has the potential to grow into something much bigger and we can’t wait to see what that looks like.

Casey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My career started as a high school teacher, my husband and I decided to invest in real estate early on to build long term wealth on the side. We bought our first duplex and owner-occupied it. Over the years we acquired a few more long term rentals that were great, but we realized being land-lords, wasn’t for us.

During covid, I dove into podcasts and books about short term rentals. I fell in love with the idea of creating a space and an experience for someone. In 2022, we acquired a few short term rentals and we really enjoyed it. I had so much fulfillment in designing the space, creating the welcome books and recommending our favorite locals spots.

We knew we wanted to grow and scale our short term rental business but we didn’t want to just keep buying house after house.

Throughout this time, we spent a lot of time in the northeast driving around to enjoy skiing, biking and hiking. along the way we would pass these old road side motels that needed a little bit of love and new life. We absolutely loved the idea of running an inn in a ski town, where we could continue to design a space for guests and create an experience for them.

I am so proud of what we have been able to turn our place into as a home base for people’s adventures whether they are coming to hike, bike, ski or just explore the New England area.

This is what ultimately got us into the hospitality industry and the background to build and grow Inndependent Stays. As we continue forward with building this platform, I can’t help but think of all the other owners who are personally investing their entire lives into their own property and creating these experiences for travelers as well. I am so proud of the efforts we are making to change the industry and get us all back to real stays and true hospitality.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Our journey with social media is incredibly unique. Myself and my husband were not social media experts by any means before we had our following and we grew our following pretty much in the span of 3 months.

We really leaned into story telling. We felt it was important to keep it authentic, telling the whole story not just the fun and exciting parts but the not so fun parts as well, when things went wrong in our renovation.
Looking back, what happened was people were following along so they could see the transformation of the old, crusty motel room into a brand new, renovated room, and they ended up staying because we told our story so authentically. We were not afraid to share what was happening in real time and in a very raw, unpolished approach.

If I had any advice to pass on to grow a social media audience it would be, share your story and share it authentically you. People resonate with other people they can relate to and feel connected to.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience is key in any success story. Last year when renovation was happening at our motel, we had hired a crew of contractors to complete the work for us. However we ran into a wall that very quickly became an obstacle. As we started to hit the top of our budget, we had to step in, roll our sleeves up and do the work ourselves.

At the time, I was still teaching at the high school I was working at. I was communicating back and forth about 5 hours every weekend from Rochester, NY to Vermont. I would teach each week, get in the car on Friday, drive 5 hours, spend Saturday and most of Sunday, painting walls, sealing woodwork, priming trim, cleaning rooms all to make the 5 hour drive back home to do it all over again next week.
I remember being emotionally and physically exhausted during this time period, but knew that backing out, stepping down or giving up was just not an option. As we work through building this platform, we face a whole new set of challenges each day.

I am forever grateful for this experience, it showed me what I am capable of and the lesson that good things don’t come easy, and the hardest things are often the most worth working for.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.inndependentstays.com
• Instagram: innvestors