Do you like travelling? Have you ever ended up losing your way in a totally unknown town without any knowledge of your surroundings? You couldn’t ask anyone in the streets because they didn’t speak English or any of the languages you speak yourself. That’s exactly what happened to Radek Novotný, the founder of MyStay, the app that lets you always keep in touch with your hotel to make your stay as comfortable as possible.
“Early in 2014, Radek, my cofounder, got lost in Sri Lanka after leaving his hotel. He had lost important contact with his hotel, which was needed in foreign city. As he had a IT company developing software, he saw gab at the market and developed first prototype of our MyStay. He showed it to one of the most well-known hotels in Czech Republic, which ordered the system straight away,” says Pavlína Zychová, the CCO.
Since then they have taken huge steps and currently MyStay is running at more than 12.000 hotel rooms of their paying customers. They are closing a round of 500k Euros from which they have already raised 200k Euro. The runway is till the Q3 of 2017. The strategic investors are mainly from the hotel industry and the funds are going for redeveloping the product and new sales channels.
The masterminds behind the project are Radek Novotný, the CEO, and Pavlína Zychová, the CCO. Together they’re making a good team, he’s more product oriented, while she is into sales and business development. Radek Novotný was previously the Cofounder and CEO of a IT company Mediawork s.r.o., focused on developing smartphone apps (more than 30 projects), SmartTV apps (biggest SmartTV developer in Czech Republic) and video technologies (complete internet solution for Ocko.tv). Pavlína Zychová is an Ex-lawyer passionate about traveling and meeting new cultures. She’s been nominated twice for the Czech Most Influential Woman by the Central European Startup Awards.
MyStay connects hotels and their guests, it`s a virtual assistant that guides Hotel Guests through their whole stay after booking. With the MyStay App, you as a Guests get direct connection to your hotel and information about your stay. The have a chance for fast check-in before arrival, you can order hotel services and give feedback to the manager. It’s a direct link between you and the hotel you’re staying in, making the connection more personalised.
Hotels, on the other hand, get very important direct connection with guests so they have a chance to react immediately in case of a problem, which usually means better ratings for being people-oriented. MyStay is also an effective marketing channel and gives statistics of the guests’ behaviour.
“Generally, travellers use the Booking.com App but this goes mainly for finding and booking your next hotel. Not solving the problem of connecting the guest with his hotel during the stay. MyStay is concentrating on guests care before – during – and after the stay in real time. The Guest has just one App for all hotels around the world. For hotels we are faster and cheaper,” says says Pavlína Zychová.
They’ve gone from creating individual Apps for each hotel to one MyStay App with branded profiles for all hotels around the world. There’s a new version of the MyStay product being tested now, with new exciting features that will hopefully be available soon.
At the moment they’ve got over 60 paying customers which amounts to 12,000 hotel rooms. In 2015 when they were still operating on just Czech market, their revenue was 30k. In 2016 they’ve earned 70k (after expansion to Slovak, Dutch, and Indonesian market).
