IntuitiveStay
Guest feedback, direct booking recovery & team intelligence
In 2025 I was working as a GM at a hostel in Thailand and I got fired after raising concerns about how guests and staff were being treated, in a role I was financially dependent on because my visa was tied to the job.
That experience, after twenty years watching the same problems repeat across every property I had ever worked in, from budget hostels to five-star hotels across the UK, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, was the thing that finally pushed me to stop accepting it and build something instead.
The problem I kept seeing was always the same. Hospitality operators had no way to hear from their guests privately before a complaint became a public review, no way to understand how their team was really feeling before someone handed in their notice, and no way to convert a happy OTA guest into a direct booking for next time. The tools that existed were built for chains with budgets and IT teams, not for the person running a ten-room guesthouse on their own.
So I built IntuitiveStay. Guests scan a QR code and leave private feedback scored across four emotional intelligence pillars. Operators get a live dashboard, instant alerts when something goes wrong, AI-generated daily summaries, team wellbeing tracking and an automated win-back email that reaches satisfied guests 24 hours after their stay with a link to book direct rather than through Booking.com again. It started free and stays free for the basics, with paid plans for operators who want the full picture.
The platform is fully live. I have been building it for about a year.
I am at the very beginning. Last week I sent 16 cold emails to UK B&Bs. Zero replies so far, though the follow-up goes out in two days and I am not panicking yet. The go/no-go I set myself was eight positive responses before I commit to the next phase, which tells you roughly where the bar is and how much work is still ahead.
My honest position is that I have built something I believe in, that solves a real problem I lived for two decades, and I have no idea yet whether independent B&B owners are ready to hear about it or whether I am about to spend six months learning how to actually reach them.
For anyone who has done cold outreach to offline small businesses in traditional industries, I would genuinely love to hear what worked and what did not.
intuitivestay.com if you want to see it.
1 Comment
This is a serious build, Benjamin.
The part I’d be careful with is treating zero replies as a simple cold-email problem. With independent B&B owners, the first message has to match the pain they already feel this week, not the full value of the platform.
You have several strong angles here: private guest recovery, staff wellbeing, and direct bookings. But leading with the wrong one can make a real product look irrelevant.
I wouldn’t try to solve that loosely in the thread because the first angle changes the buyer, subject line, proof, and follow-up.
If you’re open to it, share your email and I’ll put the tighter first-operator outreach path together properly before your follow-up goes out.