One of our main concerns whenever we travel is the place where we’re going to stay at. We all want that luxe experience of a hotel with the comfort a home brings. COSI came up with a home-sharing model with the best of both worlds. The long-term lease properties like commercial and apartment buildings and hotels with around 10-250 units. From there, they take over everything: from designing the units to finding the tenants. This means that you would get a fully equipped apartment with customer service and quality standards that from a hotel.
But an unforeseen turn of events caused an underperformance for hotel operators last year and has affected the travel and hospitality industries badly. But despite the pandemic, COSI still managed to achieve a high occupancy rate as they were able to tap the demand for accommodation for short-term business trips and holiday travel. They even received a number of offers from commercial building owners to turn their office space into a rental one. This made the company the leading provider for short-term rentals in Germany. They even managed to surpass the performance of traditional hotels by leaps and bounds.
Settling in
COSI specializes as a “mid-stay rental” where guests stay for more than a month. This includes people who just moved into the city and are looking for a long-term place or families in the middle of constructing or renovating their homes. The company also makes it convenient for people traveling in large groups and would find ways to accommodate the needs of the entire group.
COSI caters to travelers with new technology solutions for the hospitality industry, promising a 100% digital experience. They automate the operational process up to 80%, which helps the hotel operators save up to 60% of their operational costs. Currently, they cater to 12 major European cities with 750 units under their contract and are still working on getting a few thousand more.
What’s more, COSI is backed by firms and investors from the hospitality industries, real estate, and technology industries. Amongst them are e.Ventures, Gleb Tritus, and Manuel Stotz. In fact, they recently raised 20 million euros in investments which will be put towards the company’s expansion. Not only that, COSI was recognized by Travel Industry Club and received the Mobility & Business Travel award for the best-in-class technology and solution-oriented approach to operations management last year.
https://twitter.com/CherryVentures/status/1369235904750043139
With properties managed by COSI, you can expect to get a furnished unit with WiFi and bi-weekly cleaning services – meaning new sheets, towels, and other amenities. They also allow extended stays up to 4 months. The best part is, no pre-payment is needed and that viewing, reservation, and moving in could all be done on the same day.
COSI definitely proved that anything can still be achieved with a bit of innovation to progress even in the midst of a pandemic. It’s definitely interesting to see what the company can do once the world opens up and people start to travel again.
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Photo credit: The feature image has been taken by Toa Heftiba.
Source: Steve O’Hear (TechCrunch)
