Startup Spotlight – Stay22 is Changing the Event Travel Experience

Startup Stay22 is changing the way that travelers book accommodation around events. 

Andrew Lockhead is looking to disrupt and challenge how the travel industry offers accommodation to event goers with his latest project, Stay 22. Andrew is the CEO &  co-founder of Stay22 and a member of the Montreal Travel Massive chapter.

How did you get into the travel industry?

My co-founder Hamed Al Khabaz previously founded a vacation rental aggregator. As someone who hates the complexity of finding a place to stay near an event or a conference, I thought I could help reduce this friction and make it a bit easier for event travelers to find affordable lodging near an event or destination.

Explain your product or service (in 50 words…) Go!

Stay22 is a travel solution for organizations and platforms in the events, entertainment and the transportation industries. Our product enables companies to create map-based accommodation listings for their events with commute times to the event location and other local information. So far we have included 6.5m listings worldwide across 200 countries.

We aggregate the best prices available online to help attendees and travelers find ideal lodging at a price that suits them.

What is unique about your product or service?

Our system makes it so easy for organizations and platforms to provide event travelers with an accommodation solution: in under 5 minutes, a map-based lodging solution is up and running. It may sound like it comes at a price – but, in fact, our solution comes at no cost. Rather, we share revenue with the organizations that use Stay22. Having suppliers like Airbnb, Booking.com, and Expedia has empowered us to provide a large number of listings worldwide.

How is your startup changing the future of travel?

Our mission is to make event travelers’ accommodation booking easier and more efficient than ever. Using the map, travelers are able to book anywhere in the world by comparing prices from different types of lodging, like Airbnbs and hotels, all on the same webpage. Stay22 enables the traveler to filter by neighborhood and preferred pricing, and even view which means of transportation are recommended for traveling to and from the venue.

What’s another travel company you admire and why?

We really admire Fareharbor’s work – their product, the way they’ve grown their business, and the hard work they’ve put in. When Stay22 was in an incubator program in Denver, Colorado last year, we were lucky enough to have Lawrence from Fareharbor mentor us throughout the 4 month program. Lawrence’s business philosophy was totally inspiring for us and helped us to distill what our mission and guiding philosophy would be at Stay22. “DWIT – Do Whatever It Takes” comes right from Fareharbor and is essential in the way we hire our people for skill as well as for resourcefulness.

-Andrew

Follow Andrew on Travel Massive to connect with him and learn more about Stay22.