DayAway partners with Park Hyatt, Langham to offer ‘daycations’
A new service is giving day-trippers access to all the hotel perks, no room key required.
Few things compare to the feeling of sinking into freshly pressed hotel sheets. Possibly because someone else washed them and made the bed, but also because it represents an escape from the daily humdrum of home life.
But aside from a good slumber, the real beauty of a luxury hotel is generally not the beds, or even the rooms themselves. It’s indulging in a day spa treatment, sipping cocktails in a fluffy robe by a heated pool and enjoying one too many of those delectable little morsels the kitchen serves for afternoon tea in the plush confines of an air conditioned, pleasantly scented lobby.
When the world stopped travelling in 2020, the opportunities to enjoy these little luxuries stopped.
The cessation of tourism was acutely felt in Singapore, a Republic smaller than Canberra which boasts more than 400 hotels. That year, the country’s annual visitor numbers fell from more than 19.1 million to less than three million.
Hotels had a conundrum. With international travellers absent and most of their potential visitors living just a short drive away, how could they offer value to 5.6 million locals looking for things to do without feeling obligated to book a room?
It was this question which inspired Martha Waslen to launch DayAway, an online service offering daytime experiences at luxury hotels for those who don’t want (or need) to stay the night.
“Singapore is quite a small island, and staycations were already really popular but we needed some diversification and experiences we could book while international travel was on hold,” the DayAway founder and CEO explains.
“Hotels were saying ‘we offer these incredible experiences too, we know our local demographic really well and can offer all of these spa and high tea services, and even unique programming around the hotel’s art collection or tours of the wine cellar’.”
The service launched in Singapore last year, enabling hotels struggling with low occupancy to diversify their revenue by promoting their amenities and experiences to day-trippers.
“Providing this platform for locals to browse and book all of these incredible experiences around cocktail-making or cooking classes and access to the pool really created this great ecosystem that benefited both sides; the hotels looking to make more money and locals looking for that mental wellness escape, even if it wasn’t a full-blown vacation,” Waslen says.
The concept was such a success that DayAway was launched in Hong Kong and Thailand soon after and has now launched in Australia, partnering with luxury hotels including the Park Hyatt Sydney, The Langham Sydney, COMO The Treasury in Perth and Jackalope Hotel Mornington Peninsula.
The benefits of offering this service during a global pandemic is obvious, but what Waslen and her team couldn’t have predicted was the demand from corporates and credit card companies looking to offer similar incentives to their employees and members.
Waslen expects the service will help influence the way holiday-makers choose a hotel, booking based on the experiences on offer rather than simply based on room prices and location.
“For example, if you were travelling from Sydney to Hong Kong, or eventually to Paris or New York, you might be referencing your DayAway app to inform yourself about which hotel offers experiences which most align with your interests,” she explains. “You might see that the Carlyle in New York is offering this amazing jazz and cocktail experience or an incredible spa retreat and you think, ‘that’s where I want to spend the night’, so you’re pre booking your experiences even before you step foot in the hotel.
“It’s a win-win,” she says. “The hotel is really happy to capture that booking all at once and the guest is really excited to see they can book a lot of their experiences pre-departure via the marketplace.”
A glance at the initial local offering reveals a tight curation of experiences. Think afternoon tea in the historic State Buildings at COMO The Treasury in Perth, a Vivid Sydney experience hosted by The Langham and a pinot grape body scrub at Jackalope Hotel’s spa on the Mornington Peninsula. Consider your weekend plans sorted.