About Solstice Stays
Built on the beach
Solstice Stays started in 2021 with two friends, one stilt house, and a stubborn belief: a vacation rental should feel like a great hotel that happens to have a porch. Today we run twelve homes across the Texas coast and a growing cabin collection above the Smoky Mountains — and we still answer our own phone.
12
Homes in the collection
4.9
Average guest rating
24/7
Guest support line
2
States — TX & TN
Our Story
Two friends, one stilt house
In the spring of 2021, Ava Reyes and Daniel Okafor were sitting on a weathered deck in Galveston, complaining — as hospitality people do — about a rental that had gone wrong. Stale check-in instructions. A mystery stain. A host who answered three days late. They had spent a combined twenty years in boutique hotels and revenue management, and they kept coming back to the same question: why does booking a whole house mean lowering your standards?
So they took over that exact house. They re-shot the photos, rewrote the listing, installed a smart lock, and priced it nightly the way hotels price rooms. It booked out for the season in six weeks. Then the neighbors asked. Then the neighbors' neighbors. By the end of the year, Solstice Stays was running a handful of homes on the West End with one rule that never changed: every arrival gets the five-minute wow, or we haven't done our job.
In 2024 we followed our guests east — literally. Families who summered with us on the Gulf asked for the same experience in the mountains, so the Smoky Mountain collection was born: big-view cabins above Pigeon Forge with game lofts, hot tubs, and the same 24/7 local team. Two states, one standard.
The Crew
Meet the team
Ava Reyes
Managing Partner
Ava spent a decade in boutique hospitality before co-founding Solstice Stays. She owns the guest experience end-to-end — and still answers the 24/7 line some nights.
Daniel Okafor
Managing Partner
Daniel leads owner relations and revenue strategy. A former revenue manager for a hotel group, he treats every home's pricing like a portfolio.
Lena Marsh
Head of Housekeeping
Lena runs our in-house turnover teams and wrote the 60-point reset checklist every home passes before each arrival.
Come see what the fuss is about
Book a stay and feel the difference, or hand us your keys and watch the calendar fill up.