A Wheelhouse Case Study: Plumlee Gulf Beach Realty

For more than 35 years, Plumlee Gulf Beach Realty has managed vacation rentals along Indian Shores and Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. Today the company oversees a portfolio of roughly 165 units, many of them owned by families who have trusted Plumlee for generations.

Amanda Page, who leads operations, and Deb Lyttle, the company's rental manager, sat down with Wheelhouse to talk about what it took to move a decades-old, relationship-driven business onto dynamic pricing, and why Wheelhouse's Revenue Management (RM) Services became the right partner for that shift.

Before Wheelhouse, Plumlee set rates the old-fashioned way: twice a year, by hand. They ran promotions here and there, but otherwise there wasn’t any up-and-down adjusting as bookings came in and demand fluctuated.

Neither Amanda nor Deb came from a revenue management background. Deb stepped into the rental manager role after her predecessor left, and the two found themselves reevaluating how the company priced its inventory.

The push to change wasn't just about modernizing for its own sake. It was about staying competitive in an increasingly crowded market. New competitors, from small independent operators to larger property management shops, were adjusting rates daily, and Plumlee's twice-a-year pricing model couldn't keep pace. Deb saw the shift happening across the industry.

"A lot of our competitors use dynamic pricing of some sort. We knew that if we set the rates and didn't adjust them daily like everybody else, we were losing out, either their rates were going down and ours were staying up, or vice versa," she said. "It was just a matter of time before we had to do something."

There was hesitation too. Plumlee's business is built on loyal, long-tenured guests, some of whom have booked the same unit for decades, and the team knew that dynamic pricing meant working with those guests to book further in advance to guarantee their week. Even with that risk, Amanda and Deb decided the long-term competitiveness was worth it.

Plumlee's path to Wheelhouse had an unusual beginning. A dynamic pricing program was originally sold to them through a different company, and the contract they signed didn't mention Wheelhouse at all. Partway through onboarding, they learned that the original company was no longer running the program, and that Wheelhouse would be taking it over instead.

"It was a little fearful," Amanda admitted. "But the trust that was built out of what happened after that was wonderful. That transition was so smooth that we were like, okay, this is really great."

That early experience set the tone for everything that followed. When technical questions or nerves came up during onboarding, Wheelhouse's team responded quickly and clearly, and what could have been a rocky start turned into one of the moments Amanda now points to as proof of Wheelhouse's reliability.

Much of that trust comes down to the relationship Plumlee has built with their Wheelhouse revenue manager, Jake Creasey.

"I can't say enough about Jake," Amanda said. "He's been really kind and patient with us. Revenue management can be intimidating. There are a lot of numbers and stats and acronyms, but even during onboarding, the whole Wheelhouse team was so communicative. Any time we got nervous that something was wrong, all we had to do was shoot the team a message, and things got fixed. They always write right back."

Deb, who interacts most directly with property owners and their questions, said the same responsiveness carries into the day-to-day.

"Jake's awesome. I can always shoot him a message and know he'll answer me right back," she said. "It's not my background at all, so I appreciate that he's patient and walks me through it. He understands I’m not familiar with the lingo sometimes. Together, we get the job done."

Wheelhouse doesn’t only deliver clear and consistent communication, they also deliver results. Compared to this time last year, Plumlee’s overall revenue is pacing to be almost 20% higher now that they’re working with Wheelhouse. They’re projecting an increase from about $6.5 million to $7.8 million, a delta over $1.3 million!

Their June and July months, which are typically strong, excelled beyond the expected. And for the traditionally slower months like August and September, the bookings are rolling in, already outperforming where the months ended in 2025.

Shifting to dynamic pricing meant a real adjustment period for Plumlee's property owners, many of whom were used to rates that stayed fixed for months at a time.

"When we first started this, owners were calling all the time. Their rates looked different, and they couldn’t always understand why." Deb said. "Now, though, they've calmed down. They're seeing their occupancy, they're seeing their units booked, and the ones that were the hardest to convince, I don't hear from them anymore. They're happy with their performance!"

The transition period between the old and new ways of doing things presented a lot of uncertainty, but the payoff was real. As the money came in, owners began to trust and support the forward-looking revenue management that the Plumlee team had adopted with Wheelhouse.

For Amanda, one of the most compelling components of RM Services isn't just the pricing strategy, it's what it means for Plumlee's bottom line.

"When it comes to pricing, it's actually cheaper than hiring a revenue manager," she said. "It's having a revenue manager that works directly for you and has your business at the top of their list, without taking on all the other payroll parts that come with it."

Amanda originally assumed Plumlee might eventually bring revenue management in-house after a year or two on Wheelhouse's full concierge service. Now, after having worked so successfully with the team, she’s not so sure. Wheelhouse provides all of the value she needs, and when all the numbers are crunched, it comes at less of a cost than running the revenue management completely in-house.

When we asked the Plumlee team what they would say to someone considering Wheelhouse RM Services, their answer was clear.

"If you aren’t already using dynamic pricing, you need to." Amanda said. "Wheelhouse would absolutely be the company I'd start with. When it comes to ease of transition, they are pros. The communication of our representative is second to none. I don't have any concerns when it comes to the revenue management of Plumlee."

Deb agreed, reflecting on how far the team has come since those early, uncertain conversations about giving up manual control of pricing.

"Wheelhouse has proven themselves to us," she said. "We trust the way you take all the different factors and put them into an algorithm and make it work. Honestly, there's no way we could have managed those rates ourselves, not even on a weekly basis. I'm so happy we have Wheelhouse, because it lets me tend to the owners and the guests instead. I think it's a blessing."