Life & Work with Alicia Donovan Brainerd of Dayton

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alicia Donovan Brainerd.

Hi Alicia, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Let’s set the record straight. The journey of The Hosted Collection didn’t begin with a grand commercial real estate strategy or an immediate leap into historic neighborhood renovations. It actually started much closer to home, born out of a personal passion for hospitality and a few spaces of our own.

Here is the true story of how we grew, one personal property and one trusted client at a time.

Before we ever managed a property for anyone else, we were our own first clients. We looked at our personal properties and saw a massive, unmet need in the travel world: spaces that felt like high-end boutique properties, but completely welcomed four-legged family members.

We didn’t want to offer the typical, sterile vacation rental. Instead, we treated our own homes as design laboratories. We obsessed over the details—layering rich textures, curating premium coffee bars, sourcing local art, and choosing furniture that was both stunningly beautiful and durable enough for a muddy pair of paws.

When we opened the doors to our personal properties, the response was immediate. Guests didn’t just stay; they sent us messages raving about the vibe, the thoughtful touches, and the absolute exhale they felt the moment they walked in. We even had guests asking where they could buy the decor. We realized we hadn’t just built nice places to sleep—we had created a repeatable blueprint for modern hospitality.

Growth didn’t happen through flashy ad campaigns; it happened organically, driven by word of mouth. Other property owners in the region started noticing what we were doing. They saw the rave reviews, the pristine property maintenance, and the undeniable success of our personal rentals.

Slowly, the questions started coming in: “Can you do for my property what you did for yours?”

We took on our first clients cautiously, treating their properties with the exact same meticulous care and high design standards we applied to our own homes. We helped them unlock their properties’ true potential—whether that meant collaborating with premier design firms, helping them execute a “Paws & Relax” pet-friendly strategy, or implementing our signature 24/7 hyper-responsive guest support.

Over time, our portfolio of clients grew. We expanded into historic gems like Dayton’s Oregon District, serene riverfront properties along the Stillwater River, and specialized wellness retreats like Luxury Lodge. What started as a personal passion project naturally evolved into a premier regional hospitality brand.

As our family of client properties expanded, we realized we needed a unified home for them—a place where travelers knew exactly what standard of luxury and care they were going to get, no matter which door they unlocked.

That realization birthed thehostedcollection.com.

By building our own direct-booking platform, we were able to bring our personal homes and our clients’ beautiful properties under one digital roof. More importantly, it allowed us to cut out the massive middleman fees of third-party booking platforms.

Today, The Hosted Collection is a thriving community of curated stays. The portfolio looks a lot bigger than it did in the beginning, but every time we welcome a guest, we do it with the exact same pride, care, and heart that we put into those very first personal properties.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
If anyone tells you that building a hospitality brand is a smooth road, they’ve probably never had to handle a jammed smart lock at 2:00 AM in a downpour.

It definitely hasn’t been a seamless ride. Turning a personal passion project into a growing, client-backed business meant trading the quiet comfort of managing our own spaces for the beautifully chaotic reality of scaling a brand. Along the way, we hit some very real speed bumps.

Here are a few of the biggest struggles we faced—and how they shaped who we are today.

We launched with the firm belief that luxury design and pet-friendliness could coexist. Sounds beautiful on paper, right? In reality, it took a lot of trial, error, and ruined rugs to figure out the exact science of it.

We had to learn how to source high-end fabrics that could withstand muddy paws, find durable flooring that didn’t look cheap, and design spaces that felt incredibly upscale to human guests but entirely stress-free for their dogs. Balancing a high-design aesthetic with the rugged reality of hosting pets was a major learning curve.

When you only own a couple of personal properties, it’s easy to bake custom s’mores kits, personally vet every cleaner, and tuck in the outdoor furniture before a storm. But as we began adding clients and expanding our portfolio, we hit a tough operational question: How do we scale intimacy?

We struggled initially to find cleaning teams and maintenance partners who shared our borderline-obsessive standards. We realized quickly that we couldn’t just hand over a key; we had to build rigorous operational playbooks. We had to teach others how to “host from the heart,” ensuring that a guest staying in a client’s riverfront estate got the exact same flawless experience as someone staying in our original homes.

Building thehostedcollection.com and moving toward a direct-booking model was one of our best strategic moves, but it was also a massive uphill battle.

Major platforms like Airbnb and VRBO spend billions of dollars to ensure they are the default choice for travelers. When you ask a guest to leave the safety of those massive platforms and book directly on an independent website, you are asking for a huge leap of faith. In the beginning, breaking through that digital noise and proving we were a safe, legitimate, and superior alternative took an immense amount of grit, transparent marketing, and old-fashioned word-of-mouth validation.

Hospitality is a 24/7/365 industry. There are no holidays off, and emergencies don’t wait for business hours. We’ve had to navigate shifting local short-term rental regulations, unexpected plumbing disasters right before a holiday weekend, and the constant logistical puzzle of coordinating check-ins across multiple cities.

Every single one of these struggles forced us to get better. The rug disasters taught us how to buy smarter. The scaling pains forced us to build airtight systems. And fighting for direct bookings taught us exactly how to communicate our value to our guests.

The road wasn’t smooth, but the bumps are exactly what turned us from people who just happen to rent out nice houses into actual hospitality experts.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
When people ask what we are most proud of, it isn’t our booking metrics or our portfolio growth—it’s our relationship with the Miami Valley. We are deeply proud to be a homegrown Dayton business, and “giving back” is woven into our operational DNA in a few distinct ways:

We don’t fill our homes with mass-produced corporate decor. Instead, we use our properties as showrooms for Dayton’s incredible local talent. We partner with local design firms (like U+ Design), feature artwork from local creators on our walls, and stock our premium coffee bars with locally roasted blends. When a guest stays with us, they are getting an authentic taste of Dayton’s creative community.

Whether our guests are visiting for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a University of Dayton event, or a weekend getaway, we act as local ambassadors. Our custom digital guidebooks direct thousands of travelers each year to independent Dayton restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques, and breweries, keeping tourism dollars directly inside the local economy.

We take immense pride in investing in local neighborhoods, from the historic streets of the Oregon District to the serene banks of the Stillwater River. By meticulously restoring, maintaining, and breathing new life into these properties, we help preserve the architectural history of the region and elevate neighborhood appeal.

What truly sets us apart is that we are an independent hospitality brand with a soul, competing in a sea of faceless corporate operators.

Many property management companies view rentals purely as numbers on a spreadsheet. For us, every property is a personal reflection of our standards. Because we transitioned from managing our own personal properties to managing client homes, we treat every single house as if we live there ourselves.

By building our own direct-booking platform, we’ve cut out the massive tech middlemen, allowing us to pass savings directly back to our guests and better margins to our property clients. We match the professional reliability and pristine standards of a luxury hotel chain, but deliver it with the heart, character, and deep community pride of a local neighbor.

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
To keep the mindset sharp and the systems tight while running a 24/7 hospitality business, a few key resources have become absolute game-changers. The Mel Robbins Podcast serves as the ultimate tool for overcoming overthinking and taking decisive action during chaotic operational moments, while Steven Bartlett’s The Diary of a CEO provides invaluable insights into consumer psychology, brand scaling, and the human side of leadership. For industry-specific strategy, specialized short-term rental and direct-booking podcasts offer the tactical blueprints needed to successfully market our independent platform and cut out the tech middlemen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thehostedcollection.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thehostedcollection
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/thehostedcollection