Touch Stay closes seed funding round to ignite growth
UK: Touch Stay, creators of digital guest welcome books, has closed a seed funding round from a host of investors as it targets cementing its position as the go-to digital guidebook product for accommodation operators and tourism service providers globally.
The round was driven by in-bound interest and additional commitment from existing investors, following a previous customer funding round in April 2019. Sussex-based Touch Stay has received investment from SiteMinder founder Mike Ford [who recently invested in Australian online boat rental marketplace Floatspace] and strategic investor Scott Balthazor.
The latest round gives Touch Stay a £4 million valuation, only two years after taking initial investment and having been a bootstrapped operation for its first five years of trading.
Touch Stay is seeking to expand its portfolio of users – 86 per cent of its existing customers have reported “significant” time savings as a result of implementing the product, according to the company. The funding will also support core product development, including optimisation of its soon-to-launch guest messaging feature, and team growth.
Andy McNulty, co-founder and CEO of Touch Stay, said: “Touch Stay was created to facilitate optimal operator-guest communication, improve guest experience and the positive triggers of that for guests and operators alike. We’re already in the hands of millions of guests and I look forward to growing that as this funding enables us to scale our product, technology and team.”
Touch Stay’s digital guest welcome books – currently standing at 18,500 active guidebooks – are designed to present practical and inspirational information to guests before, during and after their stay, and are used by vacation rental managers, hoteliers, glampsite and campsite managers, DMOs and events organisers..
Environmentally sound, digital guidebooks remove the requirement for updating printed guest information booklets or binders.
In practice, they remove multi-touch points from accommodation in a marketplace charged with enhanced cleaning requirements. In actuality, the progressive web app technology of Touch Stay digital guest welcome books puts information at guests’ fingertips – behaving like an app yet working offline.
