Startup Stage: Flataway wants to help STR companies reduce OTA dependence

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

Flataway.ai is an AI-native toolchain that helps hospitality operators own demand and reduce reliance on OTAs. In minutes, vacation-rental managers get conversion-ready, unique direct booking websites that plug into their existing tech stack. They can list partner inventory to earn referral fees and boost guest retention, transforming them from local unscalable businesses to global platforms.

Operators will soon be able to use agent-to-booking workflows so AI travel agents can check availability and book directly with them, bypassing intermediaries like Airbnb. We’re backed by $800,000 pre-seed with about 200 early-access managers.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

Business: Flataway is a B2B SaaS for short-term rental management companies that helps reduce reliance on OTAs and unlock new revenue. Our AI-native toolkit generates bespoke, conversion-ready direct-booking websites on a modern stack—no upfront costs, no long builds—just a simple monthly subscription (launch pricing from €96/month). Operators can also list partner inventory alongside their own, turning the website into a curated mini-platform that retains guests and earns referral fees on every booking.

Technology: Our vibe-to-code agent, Staycy, is like Lovable—but vertical for travel. It is a multi-agent, multi-tenant system that turns short prompts into production-grade Next.js websites. The websites are powered by a booking engine that syncs property details, rates and availability via native PMS integrations. Our proprietary integration layer, Calry, is the unified API of the STR ecosystem used by 20+ travel-tech providers, connecting to 30+ PMSs. As a next step we are working on enabling agent-to-booking flows so AI travel agents can check availability and book directly with the operator.

Give us your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the company.

Strengths: Operator DNA—the team previously founded, scaled and exited one of the largest vacation rental management companies in Europe; stellar tech team with experience shipping software for the STR industry; AI-native with vertical focus (travel only); proprietary PMS integration layer; industry brand awareness.

Weaknesses: Educating market on “AI-agent-ready” may take time; Staycy is not performing consistently, so it’s still not a fully self-serve product. (Websites are still reviewed and polished by humans.)

Opportunities: AI search/agent shift; OTAs’ rising costs; book direct movement gaining traction; huge TAM— independent hotels, individual hosts, travel influencers, events, etc.; upsells; OpenAI app store

Threats: Generalist AI builders moving vertical; MCPs replacing PMS API integrations; regulation affecting data flows; macro travel cycles

What are the travel pain points you are trying to alleviate from both the customer and the industry perspectives?

Dependence on OTAs compresses operator margins, weakens loyalty and makes guest retention nearly impossible. Property managers are inherently local businesses and, as such, cannot satisfy a traveler’s basic need—variety of location choice. As a result, travelers revert to the OTA, regardless of the service provided or the higher price.

Current website development solutions are either slow and expensive (a custom website with a PMS integration can easily cost five figures) or built on poor technology that doesn’t convert. WordPress dominates the space, but it’s a blogging platform extended by plugin stacks that are often brittle—none of the OTAs are built on WordPress, and there’s a reason.

On an industry level, we’re solving the evergreen problem of connectivity and fragmented tech stacks. PMS integrations have been a roadblock to innovation in the STR space for a long time—a roadblock we have now removed.

Now that the product is built, what’s your strategy for customer acquisition?

• PMS marketplace distribution: Listing in the PMS “app stores” and running co-marketing campaigns and bundle onboarding with other tech providers.
• Events: We are present at most STR events and we organize one of the largest ones in Europe—the SCALE Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) show. 
• Product-led growth: Built-in partner supply and referral fees create incentives for PM-to-PM invitations.
• Founder-led sales: Targeted outreach via our operator network
• Performance content & demos: Live “vibe-to-site in minutes” sessions

Tell us what process you've gone through to establish a genuine need for your company and the size of the addressable market.

We operated 1,000+ vacation rentals across 14 markets for seven years and experienced the problems we’re solving firsthand. We lost millions because of overreliance on OTAs. A clear signal our solution is needed now is the fact that nearly 200 property managers have joined our early-access program. There are about 140,000 property managers globally, which represents our current obtainable market; our total addressable market extends to individual hosts and independent hotels facing the same issues, as well as any business that wants to integrate and sell accommodation.

How and when will you make money?

Staycy is launching now with standard SaaS pricing. In addition, we take half of the referral fee on any PM-PM bookings. Our integration layer, Calry, is already generating revenue, closing in on $300,000 ARR.

What are the backgrounds and previous achievements of the founding team?

• Boris Pavlov (CEO): Ex-operator; founded and scaled one of CEE’s largest vacation-rental managers Flat Manager (exit in 2024). Previously he had a career in finance, working for an international investment bank in Paris, New York and London.
• Teodor Todorov (CTO): Former CTO of Flat Manager; built multiple tech tools, including an integrated operations system and mobile app and a digital guest guides software. Previously a WordPress developer and QA for Google Business applications.
• Filipa Peychinova (COO): Former head of sales of Flat Manager with deep industry expertise. Previously held various roles at companies and organizations like AIESEC, GSK and Telus.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

We are a geographically diverse team with headquarters in Bulgaria and teams in India, Romania and Ukraine. Our hiring approach is culture-first, skills-second, location-flexible—everything else is agnostic and meritocratic.  

What's been the most difficult part of founding the business so far?

We have been looking for a solution to OTA dependence for over two years now, pivoting through various products and business models. Persevering through these two years and keeping the team morale intact has been difficult, but we’ve succeeded. It turns out the piece we were missing was AI—not just in terms of technology but also in accelerating the changes in traveler behavior. 

Generally, travel startups face a fairly tough time making an impact—why are you going to be one of the lucky ones?

We have a strong team with operator DNA, relentless drive to solve the biggest problem of the travel industry and unmatched technological capabilities. Those are the three factors of success we are counting on—not luck.

A year from now, what state do you think your startup will be in?

Post-Series A, with thousands of sites live, with a growing partner-supply network driving referral income for property managers. In addition, by then we would have added OpenAI apps as another tool customers can build with natural language and we’ll be on track to process AI agent-to-booking workflows at scale.

What is your endgame? (Going public, acquisition, growing and staying private, etc.)

We want to build a category-defining, vertical AI platform for hospitality operators. The end goal is IPO. Near-term focus is on sustainable growth, real revenue and undeniable customer outcomes.