Stay48 announces a £4m seed round to build the UK’s true last-minute hotel channel.

The idea did not begin as a plan to build another booking platform. While leading FP&A at easyHotel, Ali was modelling room economics to understand how deeply the business could discount a room and still make a positive contribution.

Working through cleaning, linen, utilities and the other costs attached to an occupied room revealed something striking. Once the fixed cost of operating the hotel was already committed, a room could sell far below its normal public rate and still leave the hotel financially better off than an empty room.

But that created a second question. If hotels advertised those prices publicly, they risked weakening their normal rates and replacing full-price bookings with discounted ones. Ali realised the issue was not simply how low a hotel could price. It was that revenue teams had no channel designed for those final unsold rooms. That gap became Stay48.

Stay48 has since secured initial backing and announced a £4m seed round to build that channel across major UK cities.

A new channel for perishable inventory

A hotel room has no value after the night passes, yet public discounting can weaken rate positioning and replace bookings that would otherwise arrive at full price. Stay48 gives hotels a separate last-minute channel. Hotels decide which rooms appear, when they are released and the lowest price they will accept. Properties can remain hidden until a booking is completed.

Ali, Stay48’s founder, explains the idea:

“Working through the room economics made the opportunity clear. Once normal demand has passed, a deeply discounted room can still contribute more than an empty one. The missing piece was a channel built specifically for that moment.”

Ali, Founder, Stay48

Demand before supply

Stay48 is building distribution through high-intent travel newsletters, travel creators and member referrals. Hotel onboarding will remain selective in each city so that guest demand is concentrated across a manageable founding cohort rather than spread thinly across unlimited supply.

The first phase will focus on independent hotels and smaller hotel groups across major UK destinations. Connection paths are agreed during onboarding around the systems already present at each property.

What the seed round will build

• Broader hotel-system coverage and a low-friction inventory release workflow.
• Guest acquisition partnerships for city-specific launches.
• Core teams across hotel supply, engineering, operations and growth.
• The first repeatable UK city launch playbook.

Founding hotels retain control of inventory, timing, price and visibility. Applications are being reviewed city by city as each launch cohort develops.