Kim — you asked for a commission structure, not a sales pitch. So here's the true shape of it: what The Alma is up against, what GO actually does about it, and what it costs. It's long on purpose — you said you wanted something to read, not a form to sign. Take your time with it.
Not more staff. The same level of care and attention a much bigger property gives its guests — without the payroll a much bigger property carries to give it.
You didn't ask for AI. You asked for a commission structure — because the land and the business are two different things, and you don't want to raise capital by handing over control of either. Read straight, what you actually want is simpler than any of that: a full high season without becoming a hotel general manager. The kind of guest experience a sixty-room property gives, at six keys. And your own time back — the plan's own target takes your ops hours from about fifteen a week down to under five.
Here's the gap that creates. Six residences don't generate the volume to justify a hotel-sized team. Your guests, at $595 a night, expect hotel-sized responsiveness anyway. Something has to close that gap — and until now, it's been you, nights and weekends, or it's been payroll.
Each one earns its authority. Nothing sends, publishes, spends, or reprices until it's proven itself — and even then, never past your floor.
None of these loops start with a blank check. Every one starts on a short leash: nothing sends, publishes, spends, or reprices without a logged approval, until it's earned the write — four straight weeks at 95% or better approved-unchanged, zero incidents. That's not a policy you have to trust. It's a report you can read.
Live target is October 15 — six weeks out. First paid booking is targeted by October 31, before a dollar of paid media even goes out, because I'm personally running the guest-response desk for the first 30 days. On your side, it's three logins — Beds24, Stripe reporting, GA4 — and nothing else. No hiring, no onboarding, no one to fire if it doesn't work out. You get a Monday report, not a dashboard to operate.
One more thing, forward-looking: GO includes an MCP server that makes The Alma directly queryable — and eventually bookable — by Google's AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. It's Matchup-owned, and it's not for sale anywhere else on the island yet. Every other property on St. John is invisible to that traffic right now. The Alma won't be.
Everything above is the core of it. Stacked in, at no added cost:
Run the same six months two ways — same units, same rate, same booking ramp, same mortgage schedule, only the staffing model changes — and GO nets you $5,673 more over the first three months, $12,786 more over six, because its cost tracks revenue and a payroll doesn't.
On the marketing spend specifically: roughly $520 to acquire a booking worth about $2,500 — near what an OTA already charges in commission. The difference is what you keep afterward: the guest, their email address, and the right to sell them the next stay yourself. Same cost. A permanent asset instead of a rented one.
The fee itself is tiered by how a booking originates — GO-originated, OTA-managed, or owner-serviced — with a performance floor under it. The exact tiers belong in the term sheet, not this page; what belongs here is the shape of it, not the fine print.
One honest gap, worth naming instead of glossing over: the October media minimum — roughly $20K — needs a source. Matchup doesn't carry the kind of cash reserves that let it front that as a loan, and it shouldn't pretend otherwise. What Matchup can do is help find it — a short-term advance against the season's own bookings, a small line of credit, whatever fits — so it doesn't have to come out of pocket on day one with no path back. That's a real conversation, not a term this page can set. It's one of the first things worth working out together.
The floor moves with the funding. If the media commitment lands below plan, the $175,000 performance floor prorates down with it — you're never held to a target Matchup set itself up to miss.
The governance guarantee. Nothing sends, spends, publishes, or reprices without your visibility into it, from day one. Not something you take on faith — something built to be checked.
None of this is manufactured urgency — just real dates. The high-season booking window closes January 31, 2027; after that, this specific season doesn't come back. The 30-day founder desk is me, personally, on one property — it doesn't scale to a second client running at the same time. And The Alma is the flagship: first tenant, onboarding-cohort terms — the free audit, the statement preview before launch — that won't repeat once there's a second property on the roster. Practically: the current offer window runs through September 8, with a go-live target of October 15 — and the October media minimum needs a source by then, or the season we can realistically hit slides from Target down to Floor.
In writing, this has a name: The Alma Founding Season Agreement. Not because it needs one — but because "Grand Slam offer" is a category term you don't need to hear, and "GO" already carries the product. This is the first season, on flagship terms.
This is the long version, on purpose — you said you wanted something to read, not a form to sign. Nothing here is a signed term; the real terms go into a term sheet next, once you've had time to sit with this.
Here's the shape of what comes after: you read this, we talk it through — in person or on a call, whichever you'd rather — and if the shape of it still makes sense to you, the term sheet is the next thing I put in front of you, with the actual numbers in writing. No rush on any of it. High season doesn't care what day we start the paperwork, only what day the doors open.