Tasmania has shaped our family for six generations. Since 1842 we have lived and worked here, and that depth of connection to this state is not something we take lightly. It informs how we think about property, about value, about the long game, and it is that perspective that sits behind everything Harrison Agents does. When we started talking seriously about Harrison Stays it felt less like a business decision and more like a natural next step for a family that has spent nearly two centuries thinking about land, presentation and what endures.
Harrison Stays is a new direction for us and we are genuinely excited to embrace it. We have always been drawn to the art of presentation and the details that make an experience linger, and moving into accommodation lets us bring all of that to a new market in a way that feels like a natural fit. The short-stay space in Tasmania is growing fast, and we felt strongly that it deserved operators with real roots here, people who understand this state not just as a market but as a place worth representing well.
The way people think about property is also shifting, and we felt that without being able to offer real flexibility to our owners, we were leaving them with an incomplete picture of what their asset could do for them. The questions we are hearing are changing. What if I want to use the house over summer? What if I want a tenant for part of the year but want to earn short-stay income for the rest? What if I want to block a few weeks here and there for family? These are completely reasonable things to want, and for a long time, the property industry has not had a great answer for them. Harrison Stays is that answer. We can move between models as your needs change, manage the transitions, handle the marketing and operations across both, and make sure your property is working as hard as it possibly can across the whole year rather than just part of it. The traditional model of you either sell, rent or do nothing with a property is becoming outdated, and we wanted to build something that gave owners a genuine third option with real sophistication behind it.
Leading Harrison Stays is Fiona Britten, who brings a wealth of experience in short stay management and tourism to the role. Fiona understands this market deeply and is the right person to be building this with us.
And beyond all of that, we just love this state. Tasmania is having a moment globally and we want to be part of shaping how that is experienced, not just watching it happen. When a property is presented well, operated well and leaves guests feeling like they had an experience rather than just a stay, they come back and they bring people with them. That is good for owners, good for the tourism economy and good for Tasmania as a whole. More dollars flowing into the state, more people discovering what makes this place worth returning to, and more properties that do justice to the landscape and character they sit within. Harrison Stays also gives us the chance to bring our marketing thinking to a completely new audience, and after years of applying it to property sales and traditional management we are genuinely excited to see what it does in this space.
If you are a property owner thinking about what your asset could be doing for you, we would love to have that conversation.
Tom Harrison, Director
