Meet the Team
Two co-founders, Two disciplines, one outcome: your property gets found and booked.
We're not a generalist agency that dabbles in STR marketing. We're not a property management company taking a cut. Crest & Cove is built entirely around short-term rentals in the Southern Appalachians—the search patterns guests use, the visibility gaps that cost independent hosts bookings, the specific content that moves a searcher from "maybe" to "book now."
When you can't be found, you can't be booked. That's the core tension we solve.
Our Story
We noticed a pattern: talented STR hosts with stunning properties, losing bookings because guests couldn't find them. Not because the properties weren't beautiful. Because national marketing agencies treat secondary Southeast markets like side projects. Because local freelancers don't have integrated strategy—photography happens in isolation, your listing doesn't rank, your pricing leaves money on the table.
We live here. We've driven these roads from North Alabama to the High Country of North Carolina. We've stayed in these properties. We've watched independent hosts compete against property management companies with full marketing teams and deeper OTA relationships.
Crest & Cove bridges that gap. We combine professional visual content, platform expertise, and data-driven strategy under one roof. We show up in person. We reduce your reliance on Airbnb and VRBO, building direct-booking visibility so guests search for your property by name. We don't take a percentage—we're a marketing partner, not a co-host.
Every property we work with is findable, irresistible, and backed by a guest experience that delivers repeat bookings.
Jacob Mishalanie
Co-Founder & Creative Director
Jacob leads all visual production—photography, cinematic video, sound engineering, virtual tours, color grading. His background is professional broadcast video production. What that means: your property gets the same production standards luxury hotel brands invest in.
But production value alone doesn't move the needle. Jacob's work answers a specific tension: guests can't book what they can't see. An underlit, flat listing photo costs you bookings. A cinematic video of your property—the morning light through the windows, the sound of the creek, guests moving through rooms—removes friction from the decision. Guests watch it and start picturing themselves there, their family, their friends.
Jacob has driven mountain roads at 5 AM to catch fog rolling through the Nantahala Gorge for a property shoot — because that's the photo that stops the scroll for guests searching 'mountain cabin with views.'
Jacob doesn't just shoot properties. He removes invisibility.
Thomas Garner
Co-Founder & Visibility Director
Thomas builds the digital foundation that gets your property found. He manages SEO strategy, keyword research, Google Business Profile optimization, direct-booking website architecture. He handles schema markup, Google Vacation Rentals integration, and the citation networks that feed discovery.
Here's what that solves: a traveler searches "cabin near Chattanooga" or "mountain rental with hot tub, North Carolina." If your property isn't ranking in those searches, it doesn't exist to that guest. Thomas makes sure you appear at the top—not just on OTA listings, but across the entire digital landscape where independent bookers search.
Thomas has personally audited over 200 STR listings across Western North Carolina and the Chattanooga corridor. He knows which Google Business Profile categories actually drive discovery in secondary Southeast markets because he's tested them.
When a guest finds your property directly, books without touching an OTA, and you keep 100% of the revenue—that's the result of deliberate visibility strategy. Thomas builds it.
