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Roami manages full buildings rather than scattered units – the answer when hotel rooms are too small and Airbnb quality is too inconsistent – and raised $14M to accelerate that model.
ENTRY ANGLES
Property network for medium-term rentals (1-3 month stays) targeting remote workers and digital nomads in non-US international markets · Virtual reception and customer-facing staff model (receptionists, information desk, intake clerks) serving multiple physical locations simultaneously · Remote staffing applied to low-complexity, high-frequency interaction roles across service sectors
VERTICALS
CAPABILITIES
Supply aggregation and quality standardization for rental properties, Remote workforce management and multi-location coordination, Regulatory expertise for labor substitution in different jurisdictions
The startup formerly known as Sextant Stays has rebranded as Roami. With a fresh $14 million round in hand, it's moved into a more aggressive growth posture.
Roami operates short-term rental apartments, but its positioning rejects the standard Airbnb frame. The company's tagline – "Disconnect to Reconnect" – signals a deliberate social layer: the properties are designed to be places where travelers meet and interact, not just sleep. To make that work, Roami doesn't manage scattered individual units. It takes on entire buildings, or entire sections of a building, so guests aren't sharing hallways with long-term residents.
This structure makes the offering particularly attractive for group travel – friend groups, corporate offsites, multi-family trips – where having everyone in the same building or on the same floor matters.
Roami currently manages more than 500 units across four US cities. Every property has been renovated and redesigned to a consistent modern standard – not just the apartments themselves, but lobbies and common areas, which Roami controls because it holds the entire building. Revenue exceeded $40 million last year, representing 800% growth over three years.
Roami's founder identified a genuine structural problem: travelers booking short-term accommodations are choosing between two unsatisfying options. Hotels of adequate quality are expensive and small. Airbnb listings offer reasonable space but wildly inconsistent quality – photos and reviews have an established gap with reality that experienced travelers simply accept as a feature of the platform.
Roami's properties are roughly six times larger than a standard hotel room. They're renovated to a consistent quality level. And because Roami controls the whole building, the common spaces and entry experience reflect the same standard as the apartments themselves – something single-unit Airbnb operators structurally cannot deliver.
On costs, the startup aims at hotel-level service with a different cost structure. The most notable efficiency lever is its remote staffing model: concierge and guest relations are handled by full-time employees based in the Philippines, each of whom can service multiple locations simultaneously. A staff member welcoming a guest in New Orleans can be managing a check-in inquiry in Miami five minutes later. Roami has 90 full-time remote staff, and claims the model requires at least three times fewer people than an equivalent in-person operation. Hourly rates for those staff, at $6/hour, are competitive in the Philippine market while being well below US labor costs.
The use of remote staff in service roles that have historically required physical presence is a pattern that [appeared earlier](/review/oblachnoe-obsluzhivanie) in Bite Ninja, which built the infrastructure for fast-food drive-throughs to take orders through remote workers. That startup raised $16 million on the same premise: the work doesn't actually require a body in the room.
Two directions come out of this model, plus a combined play.
The first is the property network itself. Consistent-quality short-term rental supply is thin outside major US cities – and genuinely scarce in most international markets. As someone who has spent time moving between countries, the gap between the quality standard travelers have come to expect and what's actually available in most non-US cities is substantial. That gap is most acute in the medium-term rental segment: one-to-three-month stays for remote workers and digital nomads who need something more livable than a vacation rental but more flexible than a traditional lease. Pricing per night in medium-term rentals is lower than peak short-term rates, but vacancy rates are also lower and operating costs per stay are significantly reduced. Supply in this segment remains very thin.
The second is the remote staffing model applied more broadly. Receptionists, information desk staff, intake clerks – roles that involve answering questions, directing people, and handling routine transactions – are candidates for the same virtual presence approach Roami uses. The economics become attractive when a single remote employee can cover four or five physical locations simultaneously. The question is which service sectors have the highest concentration of those low-complexity, high-frequency interaction roles and where the regulatory environment is permissive enough to allow the substitution.
The most interesting position may be combining both. Roami's unit economics depend on the quality-to-price ratio holding up against both hotels and Airbnb. The remote staffing model is what makes that ratio achievable. Any competitor trying to replicate the property network without the cost structure will struggle to match the pricing – which means the staffing innovation is at least as important as the real estate strategy.