Stay Open
Stay Open
creates pod hotels in vacant or underutilized office and
retail space, while contributing proceeds to help unhoused people. Travelers join Stay Pass, the company’s membership and
rewards program, by purchasing an NFT (non-fungible token).
The company has raised $2.8 million to date and has opened a location in Venice, California, with a 240-bed location in San Diego in development.
What is your 30-second pitch to investors?
Stay
Open manages and operates pod hotels for digital nomads and travelers in
repurposed buildings while setting aside a portion of proceeds to help unhoused
people. We convert office and retail properties to hotels and co-living spaces.
Our first location is open in Venice Beach, CA and runs at 90% occupancy.
Stay
Pass NFT memberships are one of the first Web3, on-chain hotel rewards programs
where NFT holders get the day one utility of discounted stays and free stays plus
coworking space. Twenty percent of all Stay Pass proceeds will fund
stayDAO, a nonprofit DAO that will help under-housed and unhoused
people.
website
https://stayopen.com/
Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.
Stay
Open is hired by property owners to repurpose their empty or underutilized
buildings into hotels and co-living properties - similar to what Hilton does in
the traditional hotel space. We are building a tech stack using Web3 tech as
much as possible with the Stay Pass NFT as our first product. We are
integrating Web3 into traditional travel flows and using blockchain to make it
easy for Stay Pass members to gift or sell the rewards they have accumulated
over time.
Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
analysis of the company.
-
Strength:
Experienced real estate developers and hotel operators
-
Weakness:
No one has repurposed buildings into hotels and co-loving properties at scale.
This is a new asset class.
-
Opportunity:
16 million-plus digital nomads in the United States and growing, 900 million
square feet of office space set to expire by 2025, with hotels and housing as
the biggest need in real estate.
-
Threat:
Regulations around adaptive reuse are inconsistent and vary from city to
city.
What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from
both the customer and the industry perspective?
People
have the flexibility to travel more now with hybrid/flex work arrangements;
however, the cost of accommodations keeps going up, so while people have the
workplace freedom, they don't have the financial freedom to travel as much as
they'd like. We are here to help democratize travel by having as many
affordable, fun and socially engaging Stay Opens as possible. Repurposing
existing, obsolete real estate will allow us to expand faster than most hotel
brands, creating a network of digital nomad and travel communities all over the
world.
So you've got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?
Growing
a strong online community through Stay Pass and stayDAO will help us grow our
network and brand and keep people connected even when they are not staying at a
Stay Open.
Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need
for your company and the size of the addressable market.
We
knew there was a huge unserved market between brands like Motel 6, hostels,
boutique hotels and Airbnb. We opened Stay Open Venice Beach to test product
market fit, demand and pricing.
How and when will you make money?
Stay
Open charges property owners a management and franchise fee to run a Stay Open
property.
What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding
team?
Hotel
finance and development. The founding team financed the Waldorf Astoria Beverly
Hills and developed a 400-bed Hyatt by Los Angeles International Airport that
is a converted office building. We’ve managed over $250 million in funds,
having developed close to $750 million worth of hotels.
How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?
We
want to make sure that travel and access to resources for entrepreneurs are
open and accessible to everyone. Affordable beds are a great first step. We
have helped female and underserved founders by hosting events at our property
and will continue to help those most in need. Twenty percent of our Stay Pass
membership sales will go to stayDAO, a non-profit organizations governed on
chain that will help under-housed and un-housed people. Three percent of all
Stay Open revenue will also fund stayDAO.
As
we grow our small team we will make sure to have key people be representative
of our guests and communities.
What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?
Finding
the right capital to help us grow. We are not 100% tech and we are not 100%
real estate. We work with venture capital and private equity investors to fund the
operating company (Stay Open, Inc.) and real estate funds to fund property
acquisitions.
Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact
- so why are you going to be one of lucky ones?
Stay
Open provides immense value to several stakeholders - real estate owners with
underutilized space, guests/travelers/digital nomads looking for affordable
places to stay and cities looking to help repurpose buildings to quickly add
hotel and housing stock. We won't be lucky, we will be good.
A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?
We
should have another 100-plus pod locations open or close to opening and five properties
in our pipeline.
What is your end-game? (Going public, acquisition, growing and
staying private, etc.)
Going
public.
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