Onefinestay

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]

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.^[3] 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.^[4]

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.^[5]

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.^[6] 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.^[7]

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.” ^[8] 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”.^[9] 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?".^[10] These reviews have also been reflected by the European Startup Awards which named onefinestay as Best Travel and Hospitality Startup in 2011.

References