Onefinestay
| Private | |
| Industry | Travel |
| Genre | Travel agency |
| Founded | 2009 |
| Founder |
Greg Marsh Demetrios Zoppos Tim Davey Evan Frank |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
Area served | London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles |
| Products | Temporary accommodation |
| Website | http://www.onefinestay.com |
Onefinestay is a start-up company headquartered in London founded in 2009.
Onefinestay operates in London, New York, Paris and Los Angeles. The company provides a service to owners of distinctive and upmarket homes, ‘hosts’, by enabling them to let out their home to guests for short periods while the home is unoccupied.[1]
As of December 2012, onefinestay featured 1000 hosts listing their homes in London and New York.[2]
AccorHotels acquired Onefinestay for at least $170 million (£117 million). The company is also committing to a $70 million investment in Onefinestay (£50 million) over the next few years.[3]
Origins and history
The idea behind onefinestay was thought up by CEO and co-founder Greg Marsh in 2009, following a trip to Pisa. A tip off from a local friend took him off the beaten track to Piazza delle Vettovaglie. He realised he’d never have experienced Pisa the same way if he hadn’t had this connection with someone who lived there. When Marsh returned to his flat in London he had a second realisation: it had been empty while he was abroad, and every time he travelled someone else could be experiencing London while staying in his home.[4] Marsh’s home was the first to be listed on the onefinestay website.
Marsh, along with Demetrios Zoppos and Tim Davey founded onefinestay in September 2009, and raised a small amount of seed funding from family and friends in 2009.[5]
The website launched in May 2010 with just six homes listed. In February 2011, onefinestay raised $3.7 million Series A funding in a round led by Index Ventures. Other angel investors included Brent Hoberman, co-founder & CEO of Lastminute.com, Andy Phillipps, co-founder of ActiveHotels, and David Magliano, former Director of Marketing for London’s 2012 Olympic bid.
onefinestay experienced rapid growth during 2011, and in May 2012 expanded internationally to New York.
In June 2012, the company announced a $12.2 million Series B funding round, led by US venture capital firms.[6]
Business model
Membership
onefinestay has a membership of home owners who, for reasons of business or location, spend time away. The homes listed range from one-bedroom apartments to town houses and boats. The home owners earn an income from a home which would otherwise sit empty.
Operations
A listing is created for the home by onefinestay. Once added to the website, onefinestay takes bookings on behalf of its ‘hosts’ and then provides hotel-style services to ‘guests’ during their stay.[7] Services include cleaning, provision of linens, towels and toiletries, and 24/7 guest services. The host also provides insider knowledge of their favourite places to eat and drink, and things to see in their neighbourhood, which are pre-loaded onto an iPhone that is lent to the guest for the duration of their stay.[8]
Reception
The Guardian described onefinestay as “a fantastic option for staying in London” as it is “Better than house-sitting, in that you have no responsibilities, more interesting than a self-catered property or serviced apartment because the owner's possessions, their style, their touch and their personality remain.” [9] Country Life magazine also encouraged it readers to try onefinestay when they wrote “So next time you're heading into town for a meeting, dinner or trip to the theatre, think twice before booking the familiarity of your usual hotel, and live like a local instead”.[10] This point was echoed by The Financial Times who said "Glitterballs, private lifts and antique cocktails might be fun but how much more compelling is the chance to step into the shoes of a local?".[11] These reviews have also been reflected by the European Startup Awards which named onefinestay as Best Travel and Hospitality Startup in 2011.
References
- ↑ Strauss, Karsten. "Disrupting the hotel biz: enter the Un-hotel". Forbes.
- ↑ Ha, Anthony. "There Are Now 1000 Members Listing Their Homes Through 'Unhotel' Service onefinestay". http://www.techcrunch.com/. Retrieved 26 December 2012. External link in
|publisher=(help) - ↑ Dillet, Romain. "AccorHotels acquires Onefinestay for $170 million". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-04-05.
- ↑ "BRUMMELL BLOG: Greg Marsh". http://www.brummellmagazine.net. Retrieved 20 June 2012. External link in
|publisher=(help) - ↑ "Startups: it's the era of the unhotel". http://www.siliconroundabout.org.uk. Retrieved 27 September 2011. External link in
|publisher=(help) - ↑ Ha, Anthony. "onefinestay Series B".
- ↑ B.B, Alice. "VanityFair.co.uk". Retrieved Jan 18, 2013.
- ↑ Leo, Jen. "Hotels with iPads (and Other Gadgets)". http://www.cntraveler.com. Retrieved 19 July 2012. External link in
|publisher=(help) - ↑ Bowes, Gemma (June 2, 2011) (21 June 2011). "One fine stay in London". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
- ↑ Cooke, Alice (Sept 13 2011). "New places to stay in London – Onefinestay". County Life. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
- ↑ Robbins, Tom (Sept 23 2011). "Make yourself at home". Financial Times. Retrieved 10 February 2012.