Meet Tanya Lee, owner of Vivaro Roatan, a collection of luxury villas in the Caribbean. Inspired by her love for travel and a desire for consistent quality, she’s built a strong hospitality brand focused on delivering five-star service and thoughtful amenities.
Can you tell us a little bit about your history?
I grew up in California as part of a family that was always on the move, which sparked my love for travel at an early age. After meeting my husband, we started a family of our own and had three daughters. It became a priority for us to continue that tradition of travel, introducing our girls to the world and sharing those global experiences together. Today, we split our time between Nashville, California, Roatan, and Italy.
What is your background?
My background is a blend of academic passion, entrepreneurship, and personal adventure. I hold a Master’s in Art History, and while I spent many years as a stay-at-home mom raising our three daughters, I was also involved in helping my husband launch and grow a telecommunications company. I am also a certified yoga instructor and a private pilot.
Were you always in vacation rentals or property management? If not, what did you do before?
This was very much an accidental career that grew out of a personal project. When I designed our first home, I drew directly from our family's years of travel. We had stayed in so many vacation rentals where the bedroom quality was wildly inconsistent or the kitchens were poorly provisioned, and I wanted to fix that.
I designed the home specifically to ensure every guest had a high-quality experience, but it started renting so often that we realized we had something special. We quickly understood that scaling was the only way to consistently provide the five-star service and thoughtful amenities we felt were missing in the industry, turning that initial personal vacation home into a professional hospitality business.
Are you from the geographical area where your properties are located, or did you move there later?
While I’m not originally from Roatan, my family chose to build here after our very first visit as tourists. Over the years, the island has become a true home to us, filled with wonderful friends. It is incredibly special to see our family and friends, and now our granddaughter, enjoying the island. Seeing her splash on the tanning ledge makes all the design work worth it, as it’s exactly the kind of multi-generational connection I hoped to create when we first built here.
What do you love most about the vacation rental business?
What I love most is the opportunity to share our homes with others, especially multi-generational families and guests celebrating a special event who are looking for a place to truly connect.
There is nothing more gratifying than reading reviews that praise my fantastic island team for their hard work, or receiving a personal note from a guest saying it was the best family vacation they’ve ever had. Knowing that the spaces I designed helped facilitate those lifelong memories makes the 'accidental' start of this career completely worth it.
What do you dislike the most about it?
If you are in this industry, you already know where to start! The most challenging part is definitely navigating the unexpected costs of upkeep on a tiny Caribbean island; everything from salt-air wear to logistics is just more complicated.
Beyond the physical maintenance, OTAs can be a major hurdle. They often stand in the middle of great communication, which is frustrating because, with large-format properties in a unique location like Honduras, guests naturally have extensive pre-booking questions. It’s much harder to build that initial trust and provide the detailed answers they need when you're restricted by a platform's interface. And of course, there are the challenging guests who don't always realize the amount of heart and effort my team and I put into making everything perfect.
How do you use OwnerRez to manage your business?
OwnerRez is truly the heart of my backend operations. It is the engine that allows me to manage the business seamlessly from anywhere in the world, whether I am at home or traveling.
The platform’s greatest value is how it enables me to communicate effectively and in a timely manner with every guest. From the first inquiry to the post-stay follow-up, it ensures that no detail falls through the cracks. For large-format properties where guests often have extensive questions, having that centralized hub is the only way to maintain the high level of service and responsiveness that our guests expect.
What is the most useful feature OwnerRez offers?
The most indispensable feature of OwnerRez is how it handles the integration of booking platforms and payments; it is the engine that keeps our global operations synced and secure. We also rely on their hosted website to maintain a professional direct-booking presence.
Having this infrastructure in place is a massive relief as we begin a major remodel of a villa in the Barolo wine region, a structure that hasn't been updated since roughly 1740. While I know we’ll face plenty of historic hurdles during the renovation, I have total confidence that once the work is done, adding Vivaro Monforte to our portfolio and beginning to market it will be a seamless process, thanks to OwnerRez.
Tanya has built a standout hospitality brand by focusing on thoughtful design and creating spaces where families can truly connect. We look forward to seeing Vivaro Roatan continue to grow as she expands into new destinations.
