Time to Talk About Shoppable Hotels

It was that one day in Rome. 

I just got married and my belated husband asked me what I wanted to do now that we'd moved to Rome. After having spent 15 years in a high-flying career in the tech world the last thing I wanted to do or think about was technology. Especially, in a city where everything looked like film set and at any moment one might see a gladiator run through the streets eating gelato. After having a successful travel agency business in university I decided it was time to go back to travel. Having been to over 55 countries has served me well. 

My initial idea was to launch a boutique hotel in Rome. At the time there was a very limited number of boutique hotels in Rome, in fact in my area there were none so I was primed to be the first one there. I’ve always been one to research my ideas before I aimlessly launch something (thanks to my tech background!), so I decided to approach Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne, one of the top elite hospitality schools in the world. They were kind enough to adopt me and provide me with a team of students to essentially disrupt an industry and find a concept that would make them proud. After two years of market research we discovered that people wanted to buy what they saw in luxury hotels. Afterall Westin had been selling their beds for years. Wouldn’t hotel guests want more than just a bed? I also learned that people wanted to buy what they saw in home décor magazines but couldn’t easily find the products. This was back in 2010 and selling furniture on the internet was unheard of. And the idea of content marketing? Not even a speck in the universe. I decided to solve two problems and tie them together to create one big business vision that would change the hospitality sector forever. 

First I would launch an online website selling designer furniture, presented in beautiful editorial photoshoots, so the experience would be like shopping from a high-end interiors magazine. Once that business was in play and in the market, I would then approach hotels. I would give boutique and luxury hotels exposure in our beautiful editorial digital pages and also receive revenue for what was sold in their rooms. So long was we became their FF&E partner. It’s a win-win-win, for them, for us and of course, for our discerning customers.

I am proud to say that The Longest Stay, Furnish a Home You Never Want To Leave has been trading successfully as an online designer furniture site rich in content for the past five years and now we are embarking on to the next phase. Reaching out to those boutique and luxury hotels that first inspired me back in Rome so many years ago. We’ve come full circle and with so many hotels interested in becoming shoppable, receiving new revenue streams and marketing - we’ve got a winning formula. 

We’ re an extremely flexible and agile platform so we can work with any brand or non-branded hotel across the globe. Our mission, is clear, to bring hotel luxury home.