2022 in Review: Growing Lean to Shape the Future of Living

As I look back on this year, I am more gratified than ever that so many people have embraced Blueground’s flexible lifestyle.

Our move-in ready homes in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and the US are the ideal backdrop for our guests to write their own life stories. Enabling global exploration is a cause that is close to my heart, as this is what inspired the Blueground concept.

This year we expanded our inventory of beautifully designed move-in ready homes in our mature markets and launched in 10 new cities:

🇪🇸 Barcelona
🇨🇭 Basel
🇩🇰 Copenhagen
🇭🇰 Hong Kong
🇵🇹 Lisbon
🇱🇺 Luxembourg
🇪🇸 Madrid
🇺🇸 Miami
🇺🇸 San Diego
🇸🇬 Singapore

2022 was the company’s best year by far! We more than doubled the number of guest stays year-over-year, and now have more than 11,000 move-in ready homes across 30 global markets. Blueground has also grown organically by 100% over the last year. We are forecasting more than $300 million in organic revenue for 2022.

Whether they’re fully embracing the nomad lifestyle or adding extra time on to business trips, people are feeling more empowered to explore the world than ever before. The trend toward an experiential, flexible way of living is accelerating. As a result, institutional and individual landlords are increasingly interested in the furnished rental market. We expect that furnished, flexible rentals will eventually grow to as much as 15-20% of total supply in most large cities. This sea change ensures a strong pipeline of inventory for our guests.

Here are some key initiatives that contributed to Blueground’s success in 2022.

Strong Demand: Back to Our Nomadic Roots
Whether they are traveling for work, pleasure or bleisure, our guests love Blueground. We had a record 33,500 guest stays and 93% global occupancy in 2022.

This translates into 2.8 million nights stayed in Blueground units throughout the year.

Another key segment of our demand is the business travel market. This year we helped more than 4,400 corporate clients accommodate their employees’ housing needs across our global markets.

In addition to substantially expanding our Blueground for Business team, we have refined our account processes to make it easier than ever for companies to book stays.

Much of the growth in our corporate bookings has come at the behest of the employees themselves. Our internal data shows that 1/3 of our Blueground for Business guests were the ones to initiate their moves to a flexible-term apartment.

Acquisition of Tabas
We are currently finalizing the acquisition of Tabas, the fastest-growing flexible living startup in Brazil. We are excited to officially welcome them to the Blueground family in 2023, as they bring 1,000 apartments in Rio de Janeiro, São Paolo, and Brasilia to the Blueground portfolio

Our first joint project will be launching Blueground in Mexico City in Q1 2023 through the guidance and expertise of the Tabas team.

Tech Leads the Way
This year Blueground’s talented engineers turned their focus to the guest booking experience. In addition to streamlining our payment system and enabling self-extensions, we introduced a number of features to enhance the online apartment viewing experience.

Guests can view move-in videos and/or 3-D renderings of Blueground apartments, making it easier than ever for them to picture themselves at home in faraway cities.

We have also enhanced the maps on individual property pages so that it’s easy to search by address and see nearby amenities like shops, restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, and more.

Our tech and data teams have also worked hard to ensure that our proprietary revenue management system incorporates thousands of data inputs. That enables us to respond quickly to multiple factors affecting rents in each of our markets. We have also automated many of our back-end processes like building registrations and exit inspections to save our team time and effort.

Talent Density
Since 2021, we have more than doubled our workforce while simultaneously improving staff diversity. Over the last 18 months, the gender balance of our team has shifted from 64/36 M/F to 54/46 M/F. Blueground’s work-from-anywhere model has proven to be very attractive to top talent around the world. There are 50 nationalities represented on our 1,100-person team. Best of all, our internal research shows that employee satisfaction is at an all-time high.

Focus on Sustainability
Blueground has also strengthened our commitment to limiting the negative effects of global climate change. Being mindful of the environment goes hand in hand with our mission of growing lean.

For example, our custom-built furniture is built to last double the lifetime of the average piece from a fast furniture company. All of the design and sourcing is done in-house through our design and supply chain team in Istanbul, and we maintain and repair pieces for up to three years.

We’re also sourcing renewable energy for many of our properties in several US markets, including Boston (60%), Chicago (14%), and Washington, DC (4%).

Finally, in 2022 we appointed a dedicated sustainability manager who is tasked with finding creative new ways to reduce the company’s carbon footprint.

New Initiatives
Looking ahead to 2023, here are the new initiatives that I am most excited about:

• Blueground will use 2023 to introduce new models, such as strategic partnerships and franchise opportunities, to accelerate our vision towards building a global network of move-in ready homes across the globe.
• Profitability and cash flow positivity at the group level will be key goals for next year, and we will also be exploring ways to foster inorganic growth across our markets.
• Blueground will also be celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2023, a unique milestone.

None of Blueground’s success would be possible without a forward-looking, hardworking team. Lastly and most importantly, we are very grateful to each of our nearly 5,000 landlords worldwide for our partnership with them.

Whether you’re a Blueground guest, a team member, a landlord, a partner or an investor, I wish you all the best in the year ahead.

Sincerely,
Alex Chatzieleftheriou
CEO & Co-founder, Blueground