Furnished apartment marketplace for business travelers 2nd
Address has expanded into Miami with a partnership with Hosteeva, a rental
property provider that claims "thousands" of spaces located in business districts across the U.S. The partnership opens the eighth market for San Francisco-based
2nd Address, which was founded two years ago when its CEO, Chung-Man Tam, took over
Homesuite and rebranded it.
"Miami is one of the top 10 cities in the U.S. for
corporate housing and service apartments," Tam said. "It's a vibrant
city for small business growth as well as for multinational companies doing
business across Latin America."
Most of 2nd Address' business is for 30-plus day stays, with
the average stay about 2.5 months, Tam told BTN earlier this year at the Global
Business Travel Association conference. But the company also can provide
shorter stays, with a minimum of five nights, in certain markets where the
housing regulations allow it.
Tam's goal is to provide curated choices for business
travelers being relocated for project work or internships or whatever the
clients' needs may be. "Do they want to live in a classic San Francisco
Victorian, do they want to live in a hip urban loft or do they want a
traditional luxury apartment, or a house?" he said. "It's really
important to get the benefit of that choice all in one place … and that it fits
certain types of high-level criteria for business travelers."
2nd Address first targeted small and midsize
businesses, but enterprise travelers found them when they wanted something
different than the usual extended stay option—usually outside of their travel
programs, according to Tam. That enabled the company to open communications and
build relationships with larger clients, including rapidly growing technology
companies, consulting companies, IT companies. Customers have included SAP,
KLM, Google, Deloitte and Facebook, according to a company press release. "We began to work with their booking
system or travel management company and we've managed to integrate some of
those properties to allow [customers] to book directly through their [corporate] systems," Tam said, citing both emerging and established booking tools. One large booking tool he cited, however, denied that 2nd address had an integration with them.
2nd Address is also looking at verticals where itinerate long-term travel
is part of the job criteria. "Think of
healthcare and education," he said. "Traveling nurses, traveling
doctors, researchers moving from place to place, from urban center to urban
center working with different hospitals."
In addition to Miami, 2nd Address offers furnished
apartments in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, the San Francisco
Bay Area, Seattle and Washington, D.C. Tam said the company was looking at expanding
internationally in 2020. Earlier this year 2nd Address received $10 million in
funding led by GV (formerly Google Ventures) along with Foundation Capital,
Amicus and Pierre Lamond.