Best Channel Manager for onefinestay

Onefinestay: History, Business Model, and Future Strategy

A Eureka Moment on the Streets of Mayfair

In 2009, co-founder Greg Marsh was walking through the affluent Mayfair neighborhood in London when he noticed that all the lights were off—no one was home in these luxurious properties. He realized elegant townhouses represented an antidote to soulless travel by allowing guests to stay in upscale, inhabited homes when the owners are away and experience cities from a local’s perspective.

Origins and Rapid Expansion

Marsh left his venture capital job to pursue his vision with co-founders Demetrios Zoppos, Tim Davey, and Evan Frank. Onefinestay was launched in May 2010 with just six homes listed, including Marsh’s London residence.

Onefinestay had grown tenfold by 2011, quickly raising $3.7 million in Series A funding that fueled the company’s expansion into new markets like New York (May 2012), Los Angeles and Paris (September 2013), and Rome (March 2016).

French hospitality giant AccorHotels (now Accor) acquired Onefinestay for at least $170 million in April 2016. Then, Accor committed an additional $70 million investment over the following years.

The “Unhotel” Experience

Onefinestay combines the privacy and authenticity of residing in an upscale inhabited home with the amenities and services of a luxury hotel stay. The company’s mission is to provide discerning travelers with a new category of high-end accommodation that harbors “living like a local” while enabling homeowners to earn hassle-free income from vacant properties.

Onefinestay carefully vets and selects distinctive homes in desirable neighborhoods, ranging from chic city apartments to sprawling villas. Properties are outfitted with hotel-quality linens, toiletries, and Wi-Fi.

Guests are provided with a digital guide tailored to a specific home and neighborhood recommendations from actual owners. An iPhone loaded with city info and unlimited data is provided. Plus, a personal greeter welcomes guests and explains the home’s nuances.

For homeowners, Onefinestay provides a complete turn-key management solution, coordinating bookings, cleaning, restocking, pricing, payment, and even insurance. Owners simply update the availability calendar, while Onefinestay’s local operations teams handle the rest.

Two Customer Groups, One Premium Experience

The typical Onefinestay guest is an affluent traveler with a taste for unique luxury accommodations, from a business traveler seeking a more spacious, residential environment to a family looking to experience a new locale through the lens of living like a local.

At the same time, Onefinestay homeowners represent a niche, high-income demographic with distinctive properties in desirable locales. Homeowners are drawn to the service because Onefinestay allows the monetization of vacant homes while avoiding the usual hassles of renting and home management.

Building the Brand Through Personal Service

A key pillar of the Onefinestay brand is the premium personal service provided to customers. Unlike home-sharing platforms where hosts and guests interact directly, Onefinestay operates an insulating full-service model.

Homeowners list availability on the website while Onefinestay coordinates everything else, marketing the home, vetting and managing guest bookings, coordinating professional cleaning services before/after each stay, completing maintenance, providing insurance coverage, and ensuring consistent hotel-style quality for amenities and presentation.

For guests, in addition to the local area tips and welcome home tour, Onefinestay provides 24/7 phone assistance. A dedicated team is on-call, too, to handle any issues or requests.

Through a hands-on approach, Onefinestay tightly controls branding and quality standards as the platform scales globally. Onefinestay cultivates loyalty and trust by commoditizing personalized service—a stark contrast to the peer-to-peer ethos of home-sharing platforms.

Diverse Revenue Streams

Onefinestay generates revenue from two primary streams—guest bookings and homeowner fees. Travelers pay the listed nightly rate when reserving a property online or by phone, while homeowners pay Onefinestay a share of the nightly rental income. The pay covers the costs of Onefinestay’s operational services, such as marketing, cleaning, maintenance, and more. An additional “agency fee” scaled to the property value, seasonality, and occupancy is also charged.

The company actively pursues multiple distribution channels beyond Onefinestay’s consumer website to maximize inventory utilization. Onefinestay has partnered with travel agencies to reach more clientele as well.

Select Onefinestay properties are listed on major OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia to capture a wider pool of customer demand. The omnichannel strategy, combined with the full-service model’s higher margins, provides Onefinestay with a diversified revenue portfolio.

New Era Under Accor Ownership

Accor appointed new CEO Thomas Girard in July 2018 to refocus Onefinestay’s trajectory.

A key decision was reorganizing Onefinestay’s portfolio into two distinct collections—the City Collection featuring high-end urban homes, and the Villa Collection focused on luxury resort residences. According to Girard, the split allows Onefinestay to serve contrasting customer needs better, streamline operations, and generate higher yields for the company through Vila Collection’s longer, higher-value stays.

More broadly, Girard has articulated a strategy centered on disciplined execution over disruptive growth. The focus is cultivating a highly curated brand experience through premium quality, not just amassing the largest property footprint.

The Road Ahead

Onefinestay plans to scale the platform’s presence in major urban and resort markets while deepening integration with Accor’s operations and loyalty platforms. A major emphasis is amplifying relationships with travel advisors and other B2B partners who account for 20% of total sales.

Leading hotel brands continue to muscle into the luxury rental space, but Onefinestay’s first-mover advantage, singular service ethos, and backing from Accor take premium accommodations to new levels over mere expansion.