Mobile Keys: Visiting Made Easy

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

My name is Faustino Fernandez, and I’m the Founder & CEO of STAYmyway, a technology-based company born in Murcia in 2014. We are specialized in developing intelligent solutions for the automation of processes in hotels and vacation rental accommodations.

From the beginning, our vision was to digitize the daily operations (mobile key, smart locks, check-in online, etc.) of hotels and tourist apartments, offering a technology that brings value to both management and the guests.

For the first ones, these solutions provide time savings and agility, thus reducing costs, while tourists enjoy a much more flexible and comfortable experience before, during, and after their stay.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

The startup is named STAYmyway, and we are committed to digitizing the hospitality industry and automating daily operations, especially check-ins and check-outs, of hotels and tourist apartments.

Our solutions optimize time and costs while providing an excellent and flexible stay to the guest.

What is the origin story?

I am an industrial engineer, and seeing the evolution and implementation of smartphones in our daily lives made me think about how comfortable it would be to stop carrying traditional keys and open any door from our cell phones.

With this idea, we started working on the project to realize soon that a sector that could benefit from digitizing the entry process with a mobile key was the hospitality industry.

In my experience, I have always found it a waste of time to arrive at the hotel front desk and wait in line to pick up the key and hand over your details. The same thing happened when I rented an apartment; I had to go through the agency to check in or wait in the street until someone arrived with the key.

So we started to develop technology solutions to facilitate the check-in and check-out processes in hotels and vacation rental apartments that would be beneficial and bring value to both the owner and the guest.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I love the passion of the STAYmyway team, how they are involved and committed to developing and evolving both our technology solutions and the company's growth. A genuine passion for mobile technology that adds value to hotels and short-term rentals properties.

Why are we the ones to solve this problem? Well, maybe it is a little pretentious to say we are the ones, but definitely, we are the most flexible and cost-effective to automate check-in and check-out processes. Our Mobile Key works with any hotel from the smallest one to the global chains, and it is the same with the vacation rental properties.

And the most significant difference is that our technology can convert almost any traditional lock into a digital lock in a few minutes. These solutions are compatible with most lock manufacturers on the market without the need to change them.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

The audiovisual world is very attractive for me, so if I were not running the STAYmyway project, I would like to think I'd go into video or filmmaking. Something completely different, more creative storytelling from any discipline related to this field.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Our success is measured by the need of the market and the users. We want to digitize the hospitality industry, offer new tools to guests to save time, and maintain safety protocols.

We are a company that believes that the most important metric is our customer retention. That means that customers are happy with the products and services we provide for them. There is no better feedback than knowing your customers are satisfied with what you've created to succeed.

What milestones have Staymyway achieved so far?

STAYmyway was born to provide a solution for the hospitality industry that at that time did not exist. To offer the possibility for hotels and short-term rental accommodation to digitize their locks without the need to change the ones they already had installed for new ones and offer the guest remote access to the hotel room or apartment.

Another significant milestone was the beginning of the international expansion two years after our birth, with our office opening in the USA to meet the demand of the North American and LATAM markets.

This year we have achieved another critical milestone by reaching an agreement to be the sole global supplier of the mobile key for the Accor chain, the 3rd largest hotel chain in the world with more than 5000 properties in 110 countries.

Finally, considering that the last year has been exceptional for tourism worldwide, due to the travel restrictions caused by the pandemic, we have achieved good figures in our leading products already deployed in Europe and America.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

There have been two critical moments in the history of STAYmyway. The first was when we decided to pivot and focus solely on hospitality, and the second was the signing of the contract as the sole supplier of Accor Mobile Key last year.

What has been the funniest anecdote since its foundation?

The company was founded as Lock-Up in 2014, and then, when we opened our subsidiary in the United States, we were Lock-Up America. At the first show we exhibited in the United States, they put a giant sign in our booth with the company's name Lock-Up America. We were the joke on the show because people were saying... "There are some Spanish out there who say they are going to imprison America."

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

We appreciate having a platform focussed on tech-related news that creates a community where you can find the latest innovations and trends by knowledgeable writers, and we wanted to be part of it. Being nominated for Startup Of The Year lets us know better about this community.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

The tourism industry has proven to be one of the most resilient during this last year and a half with the pandemic. I believe that sector digitalization is key to improve the competitiveness of the hotel or short term rentals accommodation and to achieve greater guest loyalty:

A Mobile Key system increases the guest' satisfaction scores up to 7%.

A Digital Check-in process can reduce the guest waiting time by up to 70%.