After years of work in the apple industry Frazer Spence saw retirement as an opportunity to do something he and his wife, Rita, had thought up twenty years earlier. However it took another two years for the idea to mature, be researched and then got up and running on the Internet, for which it is ideally suited.
For STAY don’t PAY is an innovative Bed & Breakfast exchange scheme. The website www.staydontpay.net went live with over 200 members in July 2005 and has been growing steadily since.
The simple idea behind Stay don’t Pay is that of Bed & Breakfast without the Bill. Instead people offer a night in their spare room or even on their sofa-bed in return for similar facilities in a place near where they want to visit. No money changes hands for the accommodation, but there is a small membership fee to join the scheme.
The whole system is built around the principal of “give to gain”. For an annual fee of £25 + VAT, STAY don’t PAY members obtain host stamps for guesting, which they can then later spend as guests themselves once they have hosted. Individuals are matched to others who have similar interests, and hosts and guests make contact before arrival so they know each other before they meet.
At first Frazer and Rita found it hard to find members – the concept was so new that people thought there was a catch. However they’ve worked hard to get the scheme established, visiting all new potential members in their homes to talk them through the system and ensure basic standards. Guests fill in report cards after visits, which adds another level of quality control.
All this hard work resulted in their site being featured on the Steve Wright show on Radio 2, where it became Miles Mendoza’s website of the day. Other news items followed, which have helped generate members across the UK.
STAYdontPAY now has lots of National Trust members, and also ramblers, cyclists and other similar groups of people. They are all prepared to trade a free room and breakfast for a night in an area they themselves want to explore, staying with someone who is likely to share their interests.
Frazer did the basic web site design in the garden shed on an old computer. It was not all plain sailing. Frazer and Rita acknowledge that all the planning, market research and thinking about the money side sometimes left them wondering whether they were chasing a day-dream.
But encouragement from PRIME’s Regional Development Manager, Caroline Salmon, to whom they were referred by South East England Development Agency (SEEDA), and help by PRIME’s local partner Business Link for Kent, helped keep the business idea alive.
Frazer says of PRIME “Many thanks for sparing time to look at STAYdontPAY, your help was greatly appreciated. It topped up my batteries and gave me all sorts of new ideas.”
www.staydontpay.net
Tel:01227 470780
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