Startup Stage: SplitStay wants to help solo travelers split accommodations

SplitStay

SplitStay wants to help solo travelers discover and share accommodations with others, offering a both affordable and transparent solution.

Founded this year in Belgium, SplitStay gives travelers the option to post an accommodation and find a roommate or browse open stays and join another traveler's trip.

What is your 30-second pitch to investors?

SplitStay is a travel-tech marketplace that helps solo travelers share accommodations in a secure, transparent and cost-effective way. Think “BlaBlaCar meets Booking.com”—but instead of just booking a bed, we focus on creating value-based matches where travelers split hotel rooms, apartments or villas. By unlocking underutilized inventory, we make travel more affordable, accessible and community-driven while opening new revenue streams for event organizers.

Describe both the business and technology aspects of your startup.

On the business side, SplitStay solves the affordability gap in travel by enabling cost-sharing. It removes the friction of finding a compatible roommate, ensuring a safer and more social experience.

On the technology side, we’ve built an MVP with a Supabase backend and Replit-based front end, offering user profiles, trip postings and matching logic. Over time, this evolves into a smart-matching engine powered by preferences, trust and safety filters and AI-driven recommendations, integrated into existing event and booking platforms.

Give us your SWOT analysis.

• Strengths: Strong founder-market fit, early validation (TravelMassive pitch recognition), clear value proposition for both B2C (affordability) and B2B (event/ticketing partnerships)
• Weaknesses: Early-stage product still in MVP phase, limited resources compared to major OTAs
• Opportunities: Rising solo travel market (projected 300M+ trips by 2030), growing event-driven accommodation demand, partnerships with festivals, conferences and tourism boards
• Threats: Larger platforms (Booking, Airbnb) could eventually copy the concept; building trust at scale requires strong community and risk-mitigation features.

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

• For travelers: High accommodation costs when traveling solo, lack of social connection and safety concerns around finding compatible roommates
• For the industry (hotels, events, platforms): Underutilized twin-room inventory, limited affordable options during high-demand events and the missed opportunity to add value to attendees by connecting them pre-trip

So you’ve got the product, now how will you get lots of customers?

Our go-to-market strategy is event-driven. We partner with festivals, conferences and event organizers who face accommodation shortages and high hotel rates. By embedding SplitStay into ticketing flows or Stay22 maps, we tap into an existing, motivated audience. Additionally, we leverage digital nomad communities, travel forums and social media to build grassroots adoption. Word-of-mouth is amplified by the built-in social nature of our product.

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

We validated the concept with a pilot at the TravelMassive conference in Da Nang, where attendees successfully shared a villa through SplitStay. We gathered direct feedback confirming willingness to use and pay for such a solution. Industry reports highlight solo travel as one of the fastest-growing segments globally, with an estimated $1 trillion annual market by 2030. Even capturing a fraction through room-sharing creates a substantial opportunity.

How and when will you make money?

SplitStay earns revenue via a commission-based model (e.g., €10 per successful match). Additional revenue streams include B2B partnerships with ticketing platforms, white-label integrations for event organizers and affiliate commissions via booking partners. Monetization begins at MVP stage and scales with partnerships.

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

I, Ruben Vanhees, am the founder. I’ve spent the last decade bridging sales, business development and travel-tech ecosystems across Europe and Asia. I bring experience in partnerships, product launches and building cross-border communities. The technical side has been supported by interim CTOs and freelance engineers, with plans to onboard a full-time technical co-founder. SplitStay has also been mentored by leaders from Airbnb, Sonder and TravelTech.vc, strengthening our industry credibility.

How have you addressed diversity and inclusion within your business?

SplitStay inherently promotes inclusivity by making travel more affordable and accessible for solo travelers from diverse backgrounds. Our platform emphasizes safety, transparency and choice, enabling travelers to filter preferences, build trust via profiles and avoid discriminatory practices common in informal roommate-finding. Internally, we’re building a global, distributed team with diverse perspectives to reflect the travelers we serve.

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

Balancing speed and trust. Travelers love the concept of saving money by sharing rooms, but they also need to feel safe and confident in the match. Building the right trust and safety layer (verification, preferences and risk scoring) while staying lean in early development has been the biggest challenge.

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

Because we’re solving a real, urgent problem with a fresh approach: high accommodation costs for solo travelers and lack of affordable options around events. Our wedge is clear, our timing is right (solo travel and event tourism are booming) and the model benefits multiple stakeholders—travelers, hotels and event organizers. The built-in virality of social matching makes us stand out compared to traditional booking tools.

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

Within a year, we aim to:

• Run pilots with major events and ticketing platforms in Europe and the U.S.
• Expand the MVP to a mobile-first app for better user experience
• Reach 1,000+ travelers matched across conferences, festivals and nomad hubs
• Secure pre-seed funding to scale technology and partnerships

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

Our vision is to make SplitStay the go-to platform for shared travel stays worldwide. The likely path is scaling with strategic partnerships in events and booking, then aligning with a major OTA or ticketing player for acquisition or integration. That said, we’re focused on building a sustainable, community-driven company with strong unit economics and global reach.