TLabs Showcase focus on startups featuring UK-based accommodation rental service Onefinestay.
Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?
Onefinestay.com is London’s first “unhotel”. Guests can live like a local in a London home for a few days while the owner is out of town, while owners earn a hassle-free income. onefinestay offers a new category of accommodation that is spacious, characterful and better value than a hotel.
The company was founded by three serial entrepreneurs with property management, logistics, investment and technology experience.
- Greg Marsh (CEO) was previously on the investment team with venture capital firm Index Ventures. Prior to that he had management roles, most recently as product manager, at GF-X. He has an MA from Cambridge, and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar and graduated top of his class. He also works with Amnesty International where he’s an elected member of the charity’s Finance and Audit Committee.
- Demetrios Zoppos (COO) has previously held leadership roles at several businesses, including a property management company. He was the operations director and managing director of GF-X, the leading trading exchange for airfreight capacity, which raised £50 million and was acquired by Descartes. He was a former consultant at McKinsey & Co. He has an MA first 1st class honours in Economics from Cambridge and an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
- Tim Davey (head of technology) was co-founder and CTO of SnapTalent, a web recruitment ad marketplace based in San Francisco, which raised funds from Y Combinator and other leading investors. He has seven years of graphic design, web application and open source software development experience. Tim has a BA in theoretical physics from Imperial College.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
The company raised some money from friends & family prior to launch.
What problem are you trying to solve?
We are creating more accommodation in an overcrowded city, but using the resources we already have: people’s homes.
Instead of building more hotels on space we don’t have, we are meeting the demand for city accommodation while offering a more characterful experience for those who are bored of staying in hotels.
For people who are often away from their homes, we deliver extra income on their greatest asset. Because we handle everything from marketing to insurance, cleaning to maintenance, they enjoy the benefits of that income without the inconvenience of short letting or trying to find their own house guests while they’re out of town.
A million UK households have bought second homes over the last decade. This means tens of thousands of central properties stand empty for weeks on end. For owners of those homes, onefinestay offers an ingenious and safe ‘turn-key’ solution, providing cash without hassle.
Describe the business, core products and services?
For guests, our services provide an alternative to a traditional hotel. Nobody wants to be a tourist, so our homes come with recommendations from the people who live in them.
We’re on call 24/7 for anything a guest needs, and provide all guests with our 5* hotel linen, fluffy white towels and toiletries from The White Company. Room service and concierge services are set to roll out over the coming months.
We want guests to live like a local while they’re in London. We lend them an iPhone which we to make local calls and get info about the area and the home.
We put small barcode labels on things like paintings or set-top boxes. You press the scan button in our app, point the phone at the barcode, and a short video plays automatically of the host explaining the history of the painting, for instance, or how to use the TV.
Who are your key customers and users at launch?
Our guests are sophisticated travellers who can afford a boutique hotel, but seek a more unique experience. We appeal particularly to regular business travellers to London, professional couples seeking a unique way to experience the city, or for families with children,
Our hosts are occupants of distinctive homes who spend time away from town, but lack the time to handle the complexities of managing their property while they’re away.
What they most value is having the home returned to them in just the state it was left – or maybe even a little bit cleaner!
Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?
Definitely! One of the great things about our business is that unlike a hotel, we don’t have to build the whole thing all at once and cross our fingers that people will like it.
Rather, right from the start we have been actively evolving our service based on feedback from guests and hosts.
What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?
We’re a bit like a hotel in that guests pay us a deposit to guarantee their booking, and we then take the balance of payment by credit cards when they arrive.
With hosts, we agree a fair rate, which is usually similar to the long let rental value of their home, and take care of all of the hassle.
We’ll reach profitability when we have enough hosts and enough guests!
SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
Strengths:
- We hearing from guests and hosts that they regard our service as something new which differs from what others are offering. Guests tell us they greatly value the opportunity to live like a local, in the comfort of a home, and with the services of a hotel. Hosts tell us they value the convenience of the service.
Weaknesses:
- We’re a start-up with limited resources and far too much to do! Having too much demand is a high class problem—but it’s still a problem. So hiring great people to scale up our service, finding great new homes in London, and ensuring guests have a fabulous stay is a juggling act!
Opportunities:
- We want to see an unhotel in every major world city. We think it can be a whole new category of accommodation.
Threats:
- We keep our eye on several other companies who we think might start to do what we’re doing. But our business is a bit like an iceberg and we think that many potential competitors will be put off when they realise what needs to happen below the surface to make it all work!
Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?
From the very start, people have loved the concept, but some have been scared of the logistics complexities. When Greg first thought up the idea, one of his close friends asked him, “are you really sure you want to run a hotel?â€
What gave him the confidence to take the plunge was the commitment of his two co-founders, Demetrios and Tim, who bring engineering prowess, technical ability, property management experience, and logistics expertise.
What is your success metric 12 months from now?
12 months from now we want enough homes and enough guests to be comfortable profitable in London. We want to have an even broader range of guest services launched and ready. And perhaps even another little unhotel on the way…
NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.
Related posts:
About Kevin May
Do you have to go around to the homes (unhotels) and put the barcodes on everything / remove them – each time an owner wants to rent via you or is looking to stay in their own home once in a while?
Proposition was all sounding great except for this barcode on everything idea. IF someone needs help with a tele and first needs to learn an iphone app…. how are they going to learn about how to use the iphone app – a VHS video?
I can’t see owners of distinctive homes wanting barcodes everywhere especially if they are likely to want to come home themselves from time to time. Not that I have researched this objection of course, just musing out loud. I could be wrong.
Do you have a photo of one of these barcodes so we can see how you position them so they are both obvious to guests (without having to hunt for them) but discreet at the same time in order not to ruin the distinctive nature of the property.
Am sure Kevin will add to this post if you email him a photo!
Perhaps this barcode element is technology too far and a booklet with info would be easier for people to grapple with.
Rest of it sounds great though!
Good luck! Alex
Hi Alex, thanks for your comment. The short answer is: yes, we add and remove the tags (which are about one inch square) before the first guest comes and after the last guest leaves, so they don’t bother the host. It takes us a few minutes– but the feedback from guests has been very positive indeed. Because the videos start automatically and all you have to do is press one button on the iPhone, it’s not too tricky for people to use, and it’s usually a lot simpler than reading a complicated instruction manual.
I hope that helps explain it!
Greg
(Co-Founder & CEO)
I met Greg at ITB this year and I am really convinced this team is going to make it. Really intelligent and hands-on business people with a fine sense of product development. Just what the travel industry needs! Good luck guys!
I love the UI for the search results pages. great use of photo’s for each listing and neat use of labeling display for hotel features. Well done to the team for coming up with a unique display format
A great concept with lot of potential on other european cities.
All the best
Very interesting concept, Greg (and co.).
I would have three questions, though.
1-what do you do with the personal belongings during a guest’s stay that we all normally have at home? Including clothes, personal documents or simply an untidy kitchen/bedroom?
How about after the guest is gone? Do you replace everything (even personal belongings) where they were before?
2-How do you insure the apartments? Should there be a demage, i.e. breaking a window, smudge on the wall, spilled red wine, etc., how fast do you repair them? Is this convenient for the owner(s)?
3-This might relate to the previous question, yet still different. What if the neighbors have concerns with the current guest? Should the guest be too loud, for e.g.? Hotels sure have a security service, how about your concept?
Besides my questions I find your idea very interesting, your website simply beautiful (I wish all hotel websites were this detailed and nicely organised) and I wish you great success with onefinestay!
Cheers, Tamas
Tamas makes an interesting point, Greg. I live beneath one of the ‘One Fine Stay’ properties. Since this hotel experiment began, our lovely 2 bedroom flat in [**removed for legal reasons**] has come to feel like a hostel. It was our first property, we were happy and enjoying living in relative peace and quiet. However, that’s all changed. Instead, we now dread coming home, and particularly when heading to bed in the evenings. We never know when the next group are going to arrive, how long they’ll be and whether they’re going to be noisy or unbearably noisy. Over the months, we’ve lost countless hours of sleep and my fiancée is growing increasingly upset to the point of desperation. There have been many, many tears.
We now get large families moving in and out again at short but regular intervals, making the kind of din that you’d expect when packing/unpacking etc. Granted the clientele are largely better-off, but the noise, manners and irregular hours are very much like a hostel.
This morning, for example, I was woken up at 5.50am by what can only be described as drumming on our ceiling – this continued unabated for the next two hours.
One of the quaint quirks of the [**removed**] not explained to customers in the lovely website description is the serious issue with noise travelling between flats, but particularly from this flat. They know the particulars of the issue, they know it’s having a dreadful impact upon our quality of life, yet they’ve paid only lip service to our complaints and just keep rolling in the next guests.
I feel sorry for ONE FINE STAY customers (here at least), because they’re led blindly into the property, without knowing the whole story. They travel from overseas, often after long haul flights only to be confronted by the true extent of the situation from me, as I’m forced to complain, sometimes over and over and over again until the message gets through. I’m sure they complain to ONE FINE STAY, but ONE FINE STAY just seem to keep side-stepping the issue, knowing they’ll be gone shortly and the next poor, unsuspecting ‘unhotel’ guests can step into their place.
It’s a shame there’s not a feedback section on the website, so people can give praise and criticism following their stay. I don’t think many ONE FINE STAY customers would’ve stayed in [**removed**], if they were forewarned of the difficult/delicate situation that exists here. We are trying to resolve the issue with the owner, but in the mean time, ONE FINE STAY keep churning the unsuspecting guests through.
So, back to my story… at 5.50am this morning I was forced to complain to the current tenants – we had a relatively pleasant conversation in our dressing gowns down by the front gate about the property being old, residential and having noise issues, all of which was new to her of course. This is not the first time I’ve had to complain. I’ve probably ‘introduced myself’ to all of One Fine Stay’s tenants since they’ve been arriving and I’m sure I’ll meet the rest of them in due course. Such meetings always take place after 10pm, or before 7am, as I only feel justified in complaining during unsociable hours.
The same individual responsible for the 5.50am drumming has just finished playing the piano. She’s been playing for over an hour and a half and the time is now 24.45 on Wednesday morning. I am expecting to be awakened again at 5.50, so by my calculations, including the time it takes to finish this and turn off the computer, I should be in for 5 hours sleep tonight at best. That on top of the 6 hours I got last night. Plus, they’re due to stay for the next 7 nights, and there is no porter here to tell them to be quiet, so I’ll have to do it. We’re both in for a long and irritating week and probably a few more tears from my fiancée.
This is becoming a regular exercise now, as no two tenants are ever the same and they’re all unaware of the seriousness of the noise issues. They all get to find out when they meet me (the grumpy neighbour from downstairs) and I’m sure they complain to ONE FINE STAY. Hopefully, ONE FINE STAY will eventually get the message.
I used to let things like this run off my back, but I will not stand by and see my quality of life trashed. One Fine Stay need to face up to the impact their business model will inevitably have on residents/neighbours. I will continue to conduct myself with the utmost decorum. I will continue to be reasonable and polite, but I will also continue to complain to ONE FINE STAY, their customers and anyone who’ll listen, until One Fine Stay take notice and work with us to come to a compromise.
No-one at ONE FINE STAY has really thought through how to handle their guests when they are spread out in this wide network of properties. I’ve tried complaining to them about their guests/noise, particularly the worse ones, but to no avail. I get bored of telling this story over and over again to the ONE FINE STAY customers and ONE FINE STAY staff (who are all very polite, but do not take responsibility for their customers), so hopefully this will help.
Ps- the ‘midnight-piano-playing-early-morning-running’ guests have clearly just put on their laundry, as I can feel the spin cycle shaking me as I type.
@unhappy neighbour – hopefully Greg will respond to your comments here.
@unhappy neighbour – we have removed the references to the locations you mentioned for legal reasons.
Thanks for inviting me to respond directly, Kevin. One of the good things about the Internet is that companies that trade on their reputation can’t hide from their critics. Sometimes that criticism is fair and sometimes it’s unfair, and there is-—as your readers will probably infer—-a good deal of context around this specific situation which it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to address directly in public. Suffice to say, we’re very much aware of this particular situation (in all its aspects), there is an ongoing dialogue among everyone involved, and I’m still very hopeful there’ll be an amicable resolution!
@Unhappy Neighbour makes some general points which I did want to pick up on.
Clearly our model won’t work at scale unless we can tread a line between the interests of homeowners and their neighbours. So far (this situation aside) I think we’ve been able to do that fairly effectively.
Our interests in general are well aligned over the long term with those of our hosts, as it’s only commercially viable for if our members remain members for months and years to come. For that reason, we actively exclude types of bookings which other short-let agents might welcome such as stag/bachelor parties. We also generally discourage families from staying in homes which are not owned by families, as they may not be kid-safe, and neighbours might be unaccustomed to the myriad wonders of rambunctious toddlers! We are firm with guests about ‘house rules’, and do our utmost to make them aware before they book about ‘home truths’ which might affect their stay.
We are also on the hook with guests, though. If they have a bad experience—-whether that’s because the bed is uncomfy or the because walls are thin-—we get the flack. Conversely, if they enjoy their stay then they’ll book again and tell their friends. At this early stage in our business, we’re particularly sensitive to their feedback, and actively solicit it.
I should add, we also have every intention of adding an honest review function to our website. Like all start-ups, the only reason we haven’t is that we’ve grown faster than we expected and have been keeping up with ourselves! But it’s a feature I hope we will have launched before the end of the year. That’s in no small part because while there is still lots of room for improvement, feedback we’ve had from guests to date has been overwhelmingly positive.
Over time, like any new service, things will bed down, and we’ll get better at striking just the right balance between the interests of people who we work with: our guests, our hosts and their neighbours. Even when at times those interests are not in perfect alignment!
I am sadden to see this response, as I actively participate in the holiday rental industry and believe strongly in the advantage of renting private homes while travelling for work or leisure. In fact, I immediately began wondering when OneFineStay might open an unhotel in our city.
However, having read Greg’s reply, I can see why “Unhappy Neighbour” is unhappy. He’s being totally blown off.
For the good of their guests, OneFineStay must be able to identify appropriate properties for their portfolio, which includes rapidly and decisively *excluding* those with neighbourhood (and other long-term) negative issues such as the ones described above.
Unhappy Neighbour’s best recourse may well be to contract an attorney. ASAP. Given Greg’s response, he may well find others ready to share his battle by contacting neighours near all the other OneFineStay properties.
Pity to see a great idea needlessly damaged by poor execution.