Case Studies
PRIME - Stay Don't Pay
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 20 years earlier.
However it took another two years for the idea to mature, be researched and then get up and running on the Internet.
Stay don’t Pay is an innovative bed and breakfast exchange scheme. The website www.staydontpay.net went live with over 200 members in July 2005 and has been growing steadily since.
The concept is simple: Stay don’t Pay is bed and 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.
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.
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 said: “Many thanks for sparing time to look at Stay don’t Pay, your help was greatly appreciated. It topped up my batteries and gave me all sorts of new ideas."
Click here to visit the PRIME website.