Finding short-term housing solutions when staff are relocated can be a major headache for HR teams and agencies. Startup DèsVu Stays has built an intermediary solution to make the process painless.
Only one year into his latest venture, DèsVu Stays, and Joao Mesquita’s story already reads like a classic startup founder biography. “I dropped out of school and ran a marketing agency for three years,” the young Portuguese national who was raised in Luxembourg explains.
He later shifted into property management, managing up to 60 flats. “Sometimes, we would get corporate requests for housing and that’s where I started to gain more insights into the market in general.”
Mesquita noticed that the process of identifying a short-term let for corporate customers was being slowed down by the fact that agencies and indeed landlords all used different formats for managing available lets. He saw an opportunity to streamline the process and, along with his co-founders, created a platform that would serve as the Airbnb equivalent for short-term rentals aimed at corporate customers. Like Airbnb, DèsVu Stays generates revenue through commission for each booking.
“We regrouped the housing providers on the one hand and helped speed up the process.” And, if anything goes wrong: there is a change of strategy or the relocated employee leaves, the company acts as an intermediary.”
Today DèsVu Stays works with a handful of corporate customers, predominantly in Luxembourg. However, thanks to partnerships with housing providers in other major European cities, the company is able to source accommodation in the Netherlands, Germany and Paris, France. And its contacts abroad mean it can potentially expand the scope to 28 European countries.
Expansion Plans
Luxembourg is known to be a challenging country for finding skilled staff locally. Relocating existing employees to the grand duchy is a relatively quick and viable option for bigger companies, providing opportunities for Mesquita’s startup.
“We are focusing a lot on expanding as well because since we are more technology-based, we can scale pretty fast when it comes to inventory,” says Mesquita.
Until now, DèsVu Stays has been funded by friends and family, and non-dilutive funding from the Fit 4 Start accelerator programme. It is currently seeking €400k in investment to expand its team and work on development and marketing.
The startup is also seeking to hire business developers and technology developers. In the coming year, it expects to grow to a team of 10, once they raise funds.
