Max Aniort

Deep in the canton of Valais, Switzerland, CEO Max Aniort brokered Le Collectionist’s biggest deal of its year. Nestled among the snow-capped mountains of Verbier is a chalet with a seven figure price tag. Not for its sale, nor even the annual rental rate. This princely sum was for a two-month stay.

Hospitality deals of this size are more common than you might think. Aniort’s luxury property rental company operates across 50 destinations in Europe, with an average booking of €35,000 and peak-week rates of up to €500,000. There are 2,000 properties on the Le Collectionist portfolio, a number deliberately kept small to ensure quality, and a growing waitlist of owners trying to get advertised. Such is the demand from property owners that some of Le Collectionist’s investors have been personally lobbied as a means to try to get listed.

In 2013, Aniort initially identified that the bigger hospitality players, including those that have become synonymous with short-term holiday rentals, were failing to properly serve the luxury market for both guests and property owners. “Our customers want a full service – they really want us to take care of everything. 

But entering the luxury end of this market had its challenges. Aniort and his co-founders found it to be entirely fragmented, operated by small, regional players, providing a strong service with localised knowledge. So when Le Collectionist expanded outside its first domestic market of France in 2017, the team lived by the axiom “locals do it better”. “If you want to develop Greece, in the end, if you are Greek, you just get better properties, better pricing, more experienced people”.

As such, Le Collectionist places emphasis on proximity to the property owners, while also ensuring there are on-the-ground teams to arrange services for renters. These local teams intimately know these areas, and can share advice that only a native would have, from the hidden beaches to unassuming neighbourhood restaurants. To build a holistic roster of trusted local knowledge, Aniort and his team embarked on a “respectful” acquisition spree across the continent. The acquisition strategy was simple, prioritising “family businesses and friend businesses in cool destinations” with a long-standing track record of delivering the quality the clientele of Le Collectionist demands. This approach was a tonic to the homogeneous, mass market approaches of other, better-known players in the industry.

Although Aniort concedes that M&A was the “suit kind of job” he started Le Collectionist to avoid, he reflects that “having these local people changes everything”. This isn’t just for the property owners who can avoid dealing with checking out guests or hassle with payments, but also for the renting customers. Hyperlocalisation offers experiences they would be unable to get otherwise – simple stress savers such as booking the hottest restaurants, or skipping the queue for the most exclusive clubs in Ibiza. Some of the experiences are more extravagant, like the “religious experience” of a private tour in Paris’ Musee d’Orsay, to marvelling at  Monet’s Water Lilies or Millet’s The Gleaners without the crowds. 

Rather than trying to organise these kinds of local experiences across many different countries from a central office in Paris, Le Collectionist successfully executed an M&A strategy that grew its hyper-local touch into a pan-European giant.

Aniort remembers this growth being both a gift and a curse.“Every time you grow, or you grow faster, you start having a lot of new ideas, new projects, and you hire more people –you’re unfocused from your core business.” In the midst of their M&A spree, one of his co-founders left the business. Aniort reflects on this as “something that people don’t really talk about because it feels like it’s a bit shameful in a way,” but upon reflection, admits it built the foundation for the company.

Aniort leaned on the lessons he’d learnt from that tough period when his partner left to get through the COVID pandemic that soon followed. His response to the pandemic, which shattered the travel industry: “Let’s go back to fundamentals.” He compares running a business in tough times to “going to the gym or eating healthy” in terms of systematic nature. “You can party, you can go to McDonald’s sometimes, it’s a guilty pleasure, but in the end, you cannot eat McDonald’s every day.” He adds, “It’s really a mantra of life: be confident in your fundamentals. Every time you feel that something is more complicated in terms of managing the company, just go back to your fundamentals.” For Le Collectionist, “the roots were excellency, the quality of the portfolio of properties, and the way you treat your owners and your guests.” 

As Le Collectionist grew, Aniort focused his strategy on “growth with the right costs, not growth at all costs.” There was a lesson to be learned for working with the right people for your current scale. Aniort soon realised he didn’t need the big guys “who scaled from $200 million to $2 billion and then to IPO.” Thinking about his team, Aniort’s advice to founders as they scale and hire is to focus on the person rather than the skillset they have for the company, as “you can always train someone, but commitment is something that you have to find and to feel.”

That diligence in building the right team and instilling a supportive company culture continued on to Le Collectionist’s cap table. Aniort likens the investment journey to “dating, but with someone in the middle, like old-style matrimonial agencies.” From his first meeting with Highland Europe, he felt they were a match for Le Collectionist, with “a very international DNA” and the expertise in scaling businesses to boast. Jilted at the altar, Highland Europe initially turned him down. Aniort remembers feeling frustrated to see the deal not come to fruition, but kept in contact with the firm. 

Months passed, and then Highland Europe Partner, Irena Goldenberg, offered to meet Aniort for breakfast in Paris. Initially envisaging “a one-hour breakfast,” they chatted for “two or three hours.” What Aniort valued the most from the conversation was its human approach, recalling “the first hour, we didn’t even discuss business, we just discussed life”. Aniort went on to meet the other Highland Europe Partners, a process akin to “speed-dating, but it’s a match with every person”. What was striking to Aniort was “they were not really telling me how to do my business when they didn’t know the business, which happens sometimes, so they were quite humble in their approach.” 

Second time’s the charm; the deal went through. When Highland Europe invested in 2022, the beauty of it to Aniort was that “you feel like an equal.” After the term sheet was signed, Aniort received a call requesting an assessment of the process “from start to end, due diligence included, just to be sure it had been in accordance with Highland Europe’s values.” For a values-driven founder, this exemplified why he had been so excited about Highland Europe from the outset, but also what founder-investor equality looks like in practice. 

Aniort’s personal and professional mantras coalesced to form a company culture at Le Collectionist – something that didn’t always come easily or quickly. “It took me a long, long time to feel that the values of the company, and my values, were one of the main drivers”. Despite diversity being a key driver for both, Aniort spent many years keeping one key piece of his life personal. “I didn’t want to be the gay CEO.” Diversity was a value he knew needed to be activated, and “like dating, if you really want a good match, you need to be yourself. We have never been stronger than when we are really ourselves.”

For Aniort and Le Collectionist, the future isn’t rapid scaling. Part of the model is predicated on scarcity: “If we release 10,000 homes, we are going to destroy everything we’ve built”. For guests and owners, being part of the Le Collectionist  “club” is super important. For Aniort, the be-all and end-all isn’t financial, it’s “the recognition of our work, it’s who we are and the fact that we do it better.”

Arriving for a summer season at 28, Aniort had no idea that over a decade later, he would be organising seven figure rentals for chalets in Verbier. When asked what he wishes he could go back in time 12 years to tell himself, he says confidently, “you’re committing to something much, much bigger.”