onefinestay Reviews

onefinestay changed so drastically in the time that I worked there (especially in the tech department) and the cause for this was 100% the senior management. Some examples of how the C-Level executives work: - Publicly release important private company data accidentally due to lack of knowledge of how systems work. - Laying off a whole team who had been at the company for years a couple of weeks before Christmas because they dared to speak out and suggest change against what was being proposed in the roadmap. - Another who was brought into the company to lead restructures and lay people off, who was then promoted to help the culture…not exactly setting the right tone for culture to keep on the same person who is associated with redundancies.
 The senior management's solution to wanting to get rid of the London HO team completely is to bury their head in the sand, ignore their teams in HO and give them no work for months until they are forced to leave out of complete boredom. Oh and on top of this, hire the exact same teams in France and get them to do what should be the London team's jobs, behind their back, while not communicating any of this at all and ignoring numerous messages and evading questions. I have never worked with such an immature and cowardly bunch of executives - I can count less than a handful out of the eleven executives that actually care about their teams and are transparent, but these executives are pushed aside by the others and equally as ignored as the rest of us.
 onefinestay used to have an amazing reputation for tech which was one of the reasons why I took a job there, along with the brilliant culture and perks. If you are considering taking a tech job within this company, do not, it is career suicide. The whole London tech department has jumped ship within a matter of months (some new people only lasting for three months), something none of us wanted to do. However with the clear favouritism being the Paris office and some clear, biased hatred towards anyone who doesn’t speak French, there is no future in this company for tech or product within London. The company itself are currently re-evaluating if they are a tech company, which in itself speaks volumes.
 Everything that made onefinestay as a company unique and a wonderful place to work is completely gone. When a company gets acquired, you'd expect the benefits to go up, not having all benefits scrapped and alienating your employees. It won't be long before Accor realise that their little experiment has failed and then onefinestay will be gone. Not that it is onefinestay anymore, it's just another Travelkeys or Squarebreak site, considering that they are the people that are running this show.
 If you are even thinking about taking a job in the London office, I strongly recommend that you do not - the environment and what remains of the culture are completely toxic.

OFS is plagued by structural and systemic problems that, after years of operation, either have not or simply cannot be rectified. Despite its infatuation with the "startup" label, OFS is not a tech company: it is a hospitality firm, claiming to be in the business of disrupting an industry it has repeatedly shown it does not actually understand. At the local (branch) level, OFS is a bunch of 20- and 30-somethings with little to no experience in bringing a company to profitability. Moreover, there are legitimate concerns about the OFS's ability to ever reach profitability, given the notoriously low margins of the industry and the firm's continued difficulty in finding a stable operating model. OFS has not demonstrated any of the positive scale or network effects often associated with tech startups. This is because OFS is not a tech startup, but a hospitality upstart. Unlike airbnb, OFS purports to sell a luxury product, making cost-cutting difficult, as consumers of luxury goods and services are particularly sensitive to reductions in product quality. The only ways for OFS to significantly reduce its costs also significantly impact guest and homeowner experience, harming the overall brand. Like many other would-be "disrupters" of low-margin industries centered on physical goods or services, OFS is struggling to reach profitability. Given that OFS is still not profitable after 8 years of operation (the firm was founded in 2009), it seems unlikely that it will ever be able to survive without significant investor subsidy. The tech startup concept is particularly laughable when applied to OFS, due to its ongoing issues with technology. Internal apps frequently fail. Office IT is often one overworked (and massively under-appreciated) staff member. Tech tools are chosen poorly and then barely maintained. Internal systems for data collection and management are insufficient, if present at all. While OFS likes to present an image of being a nimble, young, tech-driven company, its tech is woefully inadequate. There are also significant problems with OFS's office culture. OFS branches are racially stratified, with the vast majority of black and brown staff members occupying the lowest positions (mostly cleaners). After being acquired by its corporate parent and the subsequent revelation of the firm's dire financial situation (severe capital burn, etc.), OFS began to cut costs by laying off or otherwise removing its lowest paid staff, sometimes replacing them with "independent contractors" (quotes used, because these workers often do not meet the legal requirements set by the Department of Labor). As for higher paid staff (managers, etc.), there seems to be a dearth of oversight and a glut of undeserved compensation. The firm tracks very little data and has almost no useful performance metrics. As such, friends hire friends and friends promote friends. Poor performance, especially in managers, is rarely (if ever) punished. Hardworking employees at lower levels are routinely exploited and sometimes outright abused.