OVERVIEW: Staze is a fast-growing hotel platform that helps businesses take their hotel bookings to net zero. It displays a live carbon footprint for 3 million hotel rooms worldwide, making it easy for travellers to find and book the hotel with the lowest carbon footprint in any given city. Each booking on Staze is carbon negative, meaning that the carbon footprint is double offset to ensure the trip results in negative CO2 emissions.
The Staze platform gives travellers visibility on the actual carbon footprint of different hotels with a unique, data-driven approach. The calculations rely on millions of datapoints, such as local energy mixes and regional occupancy, and are updated day to day. A quick browse reveals that in popular cities you can reduce your hotel carbon footprint by a factor of 10 by choosing the right hotel.
The London-based business launched in March 2020 and raised a seed round later that year.
KEY FACTS: Founders: Jay Olenicz, Henry Popiolek, Dustin Silk
Launch date: March 2020
Experience: Management Consultants at Newton Europe and Full stack developer at Media monks
Geographic reach: Global
Team: 10
CREDENTIALS: Staze helps you reduce your hotel CO2 footprint by more than 70% and then automatically double offsets every booking. Businesses are provided with an excellent reporting suite and carbon offset certificates each month. The business only supports verified offsetting projects and the portfolio is aligned to the Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting.
PROPRIETARY PROPOSITION: The proprietary hotel carbon calculation model is based on data collected from more than 3 million hotel rooms worldwide, focussing on actual energy consumption, energy mix and occupancy and is frequently updated.
TARGET MARKET: The Staze platform is targeted at sustainable-minded corporate businesses, helping them to track, offset and reduce the carbon footprint of their hotel bookings.
COMMERCIAL MODEL: The business operates a clear and transparent subscription-based model, with tiered pricing depending on monthly spend and provides access to a range of negotiated wholesale hotel rates. Further discount is available for annual subscriptions versus monthly.
BLACK BOX COMMENT: I love the Staze mission that people can travel but make more sustainable choices and it pledges to deliver this information clearly at the point of sale to influence the right decision making. Jay and the team also have very personal pledges alongside their business goals. The commercial model is both simple and scalable and Jay believes fervently that more sustainable choices most definitely do not have to mean more costly. I am really impressed with the smart combination of wholesale procurement for advantageous hotel rates, placed alongside a very credible offsetting solution. This business is most certainly one to watch!
Review by Paula Cullen, Partner Black Box Partnerships
