How 11 people manage nearly 100 short-term rentals

Key Takeaways

Just 11 employees manage nearly 100 short-term rental apartments and roughly 550 guest check-ins during a busy month
The operation sits in Ballito, a fast-growing beach destination about 25 miles north of Durban on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast
DropInn says travelers increasingly expect hotel-level responsiveness and consistency even when booking full apartments

Nearly 100 short-term rental apartments. Roughly 550 guest check-ins in a busy month.

And just 11 people keeping the whole thing moving.

That’s the operation Anni du Plessis helps run for DropInn in Ballito, a beach town on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coast roughly 20 minutes from King Shaka International Airport.

For American hosts, the geography may be unfamiliar. The headaches probably won’t be.

Pricing changes. Back-to-back turnovers. Broken appliances. Guest messages. Parking complaints. Noise. Owners who need answers. And travelers who increasingly expect their vacation rental to operate a lot more like a hotel.

Du Plessis, 27, oversees an 11-member team managing nearly 100 serviced apartments.

The team handles everything from pricing and bookings to housekeeping, maintenance, inspections, guest communication and relationships with property owners.

Vacation rentals are starting to look a lot more like hotels

DropInn calls its setup an ApartHotel model, essentially combining the space and privacy of a short-term rental with the service guests would expect from a professionally operated hotel.

Du Plessis summed it up as offering “the freedom of an apartment with the certainty of a hotel,” according to a new report from IOL.

That certainty takes work.

Before someone checks in, the team isn’t simply making sure the apartment was cleaned. Keys have to be ready. Hot water has to work. Appliances, switches and locks have to be checked. Then the process starts over when the next guest arrives.

Du Plessis told IOL that travelers who once accepted a more hands-off self-catering stay are increasingly looking for faster responses, predictable standards and service that feels closer to a hotel.

That’s a shift U.S. hosts are seeing too as professional managers take a larger share of short-term rental inventory and guests get accustomed to more standardized stays.

They pulled off a five-star rating while the property was still being built

One of DropInn’s biggest tests came during the 2025 rollout of a new community, “Ballito Life.”

The development was opening in phases, forcing the team to onboard, furnish and inspect roughly 30 apartments at a time while other parts of the property were still under construction.

Guests were already arriving.

The construction wasn’t finished.

And the expectation was still five-star service.

DropInn ultimately recorded a five-star Airbnb guest rating for Ballito Life in December 2025 even though later phases of the development remained under construction.

The other challenge will sound particularly familiar to American vacation rental owners.

DropInn’s apartments aren’t isolated resorts. They’re located inside residential developments where short-term guests and permanent residents share the same roads, parking areas and amenities.

Du Plessis said noise and parking generate the most friction.

Instead of waiting for complaints, her team identifies apartments where problems are more likely and warns guests early about expectations. The goal is to keep residents happy without making vacationers feel as though someone is watching their every move.

It’s a balancing act U.S. hosts know well as beach towns and other vacation markets wrestle with many of the same complaints over parking, parties and neighborhood disruption. Some communities have responded with escalating fines, license caps and even temporary freezes on short-term rental permits.

Her route into short-term rentals was an unusual one

Du Plessis didn’t start in hotels, vacation rentals or property management.

She started in forensic accounting.

While digging through a construction company’s records looking for a purchase order, she realized she was spending her career reconstructing decisions other people had already made. She wanted to be closer to the action.

“I was buried in a construction company’s records, looking for a purchase order and trying to work out who had signed off on an expense. Somewhere in that paper trail, it dawned on me that I was spending my days reconstructing other people’s decisions after the fact,” she recalled.

“The people were gone from the page, and all I was left with were the numbers and figures they had left behind. That was when I realised how important it was to me to be in the present tense, to be in the moment and part of what was actually happening.”

Her first taste of hospitality came while helping launch the Ballito Farmers Market, which she said grew to more than 150 vendors and thousands of visitors on weekends. She moved into DropInn in 2025.

The accounting background hasn’t exactly gone to waste.

“People often assume that an accounting background is a strange route into hospitality, but I have found that it is exactly what the job needs. I can look at a portfolio and understand what the numbers are telling me, while at the same time putting myself in a guest’s shoes,” she said. “In practice, it is a live operation that is constantly moving,” she added.

Du Plessis said it helps her understand whether a rental portfolio is actually performing while still looking at the experience through a guest’s eyes.

It has also helped when dealing with skeptical clients. In one meeting, a client challenged numbers she presented and asked to speak with a director. The director joined the conversation and gave him exactly the same answer.

“The only thing that changed was who the answer came from,” du Plessis said.