St. John Ultimate Villas owner Kristen Cox put her experience in the vacation-villa market to good use when she opened her own company four years ago. Every day is different, and that’s the reason she likes her job so much.
"I like the people that I meet, the problem-solving, and making people happy on vacation," she says.
The company manages 13 high-end vacation villas at locations across the island, as well as three condominiums. Additionally, St. John Ultimate Villas markets other villas.
Cox got her vacation-villa-management feet wet starting in 1995 through a job with Caribbean Villas, another St. John villa-management company. She put in stints at Holiday Homes real estate and worked on construction management for a Peter Bay villa while privately managing several vacation homes.
As owner of St. John Ultimate Villas, Cox handles the details for the villa owners. That includes arranging for housekeepers, hiring the gardener, lining up pool maintenance, keeping the books, doing the accounting, paying taxes and myriad other details.
"Whatever it takes to run the home," she says.
During the busier winter season, she hire several people to help, but since things are currently slow, she depends on her assistant, Tonia Brathwaite, to keeps the businesses on an even keel.
Cox goes the extra mile for her villa owners, including the time she pieked up guests at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning when they arrived by water taxi. She has carried three-quarter-inch plywood up stairs to board up windows when a hurricane threatened, and she says she stood up to a rather large and rich man who had "abused" one of the villas she managed.
"He was in my face, but I was right back at him," she says, adding that she does what it takes to protect her villa owners’ interests.
Some of the villas allow weddings, which can lead to some disruptive behavior on the part of the guests. When that happens, Cox says she calls the police.
Cox, a native of Dearborn, Mich., moved to St. John in 1994 because her aunt, Joan Shaffran, married Don Carlos restaurant owner Carlos Shaffran. Her aunt returned to Michigan, but Cox stayed on.
"I found my paradise," she says.
Before moving to the territory, she attended the University of Michigan at Dearborn, worked in a children’s hospital and got involved in the hospitality industry by running a pizza and sub shop, as well as working in a bar.
"I always worked at least two jobs," she says.
When her daughter’s father died more than a dozen years ago, she raised Kierra, now 13, on her own.
Busy with her daughter and her business, Cox, 39, still finds time to head over to Jost Van Dyke for the weekend.
"It’s so slow and I have a lot of friends over there," she says.
For more information, call 776-4703 or visit www.stjohnultimatevillas.com.
