Serviced accommodation brand Mysa has unveiled technology to help corporate buyers and agents book and manage business travel stays.
The Myo platform, which also offers a booking engine, aims to offer “conscious accommodation for conscious companies” by building duty of care as well as safety elements into the procurement process.
Mysa says the platform offers the same level of control to buyers that they would have when booking an airline or hotel with alternative accommodation properties audited against certain standards before being put on the system.
Gary Hurst, founder and CEO of Mysa, says: “I’ve worked with many large global organizations and the serviced accommodation sector has always been the runt of the litter when it comes to business travel because it has been so difficult when it comes to source, procure and even book.
"The efficiency isn’t there. GDSs have been around for a long time and so many companies have relied on them to access inventory but it has never really fit for serviced accommodation and what this has led to is a breakdown of efficiencies when trying ot put an accommodation program together.”
The Myo platform also enables accommodation providers and corporates to form direct distribution deals where before they have relied on intermediaries and manual booking processes.
Hurst adds: “That has put the due diligence required into the shadows because buyers haven’t really got the ability to do that due diligence themselves.”
Mysa originally unveiled a booking engine two years ago to connect operators and corporates but says this goes further by offering a “one-stop ecosystem from the procurement through to the auditing to the booking of properties and the data management at the end of it.”
Hurst says the timing is right for the technology with the heightened focus on duty of care, traveler wellbeing and sustainability that has been driven by the pandemic.
Hurst was formerly with BridgeStreet, which launched a corporate-travel focused online travel agency in 2017.
The business did not fare well in the pandemic, with filing for bankruptcy in late 2020.
MagicStay, a startup aiming to make the apartment booking process as easy as that of hotels, raised €1.5 million in early 2018 followed by €3 million in mid 2019.