Aussie Holiday Stays

The Boosting Female Founders Initiative is a grant to help female founders of start-up businesses to launch and scale their businesses into domestic and global markets.

We spoke to Amanda Walker from Aussie Holiday Stays to chat about her journey and how the Initiative helped expand her start up.

How did you find out about the Female Founders Initiative?

Through the start-up community around Perth. There is always a lot of excitement for founders when there is an opportunity for funding! Word of mouth, from other female founders, was the first way I found out about Boosting Female Founders Grant.

Then an email advised of the mentoring opportunity attached to it, so I jumped at the opportunity.

What motivated you to start your own business?

We owned a holiday home in the Southwest of WA. When Stayz changed to their international booking platform, HomeAway, we saw a decrease in customer service, increase in fees and general disconnect from the local community. We realised there was an opportunity to provide better service for less, so the idea of creating our own booking platform was born.

Looking back now, I think we were probably motivated by a good dose of crazy too but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

What is the most valuable information you learned in the Female Founders Initiative?

Wow, Eric was fantastic, so I learnt a lot. One thing that sticks out the most was the power of my network. It is something I had underestimated until Eric asked me to look at the warm contacts, I could generate from the people I know.

It was surprising to realise how uncomfortable I was to ask for an introduction! I clearly prefer to make my own way and make introductions for others. However, Eric rightly pointed out that this is an important part of business and I should embrace the connections I have made along the journey.

Another thing that stood out was recognising how broad marketing truly is. Even though I have not had specific training in marketing, I am the main ambassador for my business and every time I get positive feedback from pitches that I do, relationships that I build etc, this is some of the most effective marketing that you can do and not to discount that.

What services and/or products do you provide?

Aussie Holiday Stays, https//aussieholidaystays.com.au is an online booking platform with heart for Australian holiday accommodation. We pride ourselves on our values of integrity, community and sustainability.

Our values are reflected through our lower booking fees, our fairness to both owners and guests, promoting sustainable tourism by only allowing registered properties to list on our site and giving back to the local communities we are operating in.

What challenges have you had to face since starting your business? How have you overcome these challenges?

Well, we have decided to create a local Australian booking platform and go against some major multinational competitors, so there have been A LOT of challenges. However, we have been blown away by the support for a local platform.

There is a change in consumer demand, especially since COVID. People want booking monies to stay in Australia and for the Australian economy to flourish. There is also a lot of socially conscious travellers wanting to do the right thing by local communities so the fact we are promoting sustainable tourism has really resonated with these people.

Back at the very start of our journey the biggest challenge was how on earth we were even going to start. We had no tech experience and were on a very standard couples’ budget, bootstrapping our start up.

There were a lot of mistakes along the way but we were lucky to keep knocking on doors that kept showing a path forward. Now we have just launched nationally, have both our developers as co-founders and are going from strength to strength. What an incredible ride!

What have been some of the highlights of operating your own business?

Proving people wrong (hahaha). Is that a terrible thing to say? We knew we had an uphill battle against our competition and a lot of people wrote us off when we had our minimal viable product, WA Homestay (a WA booking platform).

We kept moving forward and learning and managed to get some incredible traction to fuel the national launch. I think that is the most satisfying thing. So many people we approached initially, loved our idea but thought the bigger players would make it impossible to make any ground.

We are still standing 3 years on and expanding nationally and that feels pretty incredible.

What is one piece of advice you can give to others thinking about starting their own business?

Imperfect action wins over no action at all every time. You don’t have to have all the answers, it does not have to be perfect. Get out there and have a go (with as little cost as possible initially). Learn along the way and remember to celebrate the little wins as this journey is tough.

Are there any additional comments you would like to include about your business, journey or experience?

No except to say a big thank you to Eric for his mentorship and Business Foundations for being a part of this program. It makes a huge difference to start ups to have this opportunity.

You can learn more about Aussie Holiday Stays through their Website, Facebook and Instagram.

You can learn more about the Boosting Female Founders Initiative below.

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