The round was driven by in-bound interest and additional commitment from existing investors, following a previous customer funding round in April 2019.
UK – Touch Stay, creators of digital guest welcome books, has closed a seed funding round from a host of investors as it targets becoming 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 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’ trading.
Touch Stay is seeking to expand its portfolio of users with 86% of existing customers reporting significant time savings as a result of implementing the product. 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, says: “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.”
There are currently 18,500 active Touch Stay guidebooks presenting practical and inspirational information to guests before, during and after their stay. Environmentally and productively, 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.
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
