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Staze review: My trip with the Netflix of last-minute staycations
There’s something thrilling about knowing you’re going on holiday, but not knowing where.
When I first signed up with Staze, the last-minute booking app that wants to be the “Netflix of staycations”, not having our accommodation set in stone felt unsettling – hotel rooms are like gold-dust this summer and AirBnbs seems to booked out until the end of the year amid a flurry of post-lockdown panic bookings.
“Save the date,” I WhatsApped my girl group ahead of our annual summer weekend away. “Where are we going?” they asked, naturally, hoping for a cool UK hotspot to stalk on Instagram to wile away the hours at their desks.
I told them to block the dates out in their diaries and save their stalking for the train journey. The beauty of Staze is you can only make bookings within 14 days of a trip, and given the app’s diverse selection of thousands of properties across the UK, we could be going anywhere from a luxury apartment in Bristol to a cosy fishing shack in Scotland.
Obviously, we’d have been happy to go anywhere, given Staze’s promise of chic, stylish properties and personalised recommendations (you simply input your budget, travel time and transport preference – car or train – and Staze does the hard work for you. Just remember that travel isn’t included in the quoted price). After a year starved of holidays, we were mostly just happy to be leaving our flats.
But when we reached the fortnight before and saw the long-range forecast’s prediction for the hottest weekend of the year, our anticipation peaked. Would our destination be as hot as London? Would the rooms have air-con? Would there be sea or a river we could jump in when the great British sunshine inevitably got too much?
Thankfully for us, Staze must have seen this coming. Among the Brightons and the Newcastles popping up on our suggested list of locations, a more unlikely option: a beautiful manor house, Upper Court, in the land-locked Cotswolds, but (crucially), with a pool. Picturing the crowds on Brighton beach, we picked the Cotswolds curveball and trundled our suitcases to Paddington station pretending we were jet-setting to Spain.
For anyone looking at the pictures of us sunning on our unicorn pool float that Sunday night, it might as well have been. Granted, we got lucky with the heatwave, but our Gloucestershire minibreak also had the magic you often find abroad of exploring a totally unknown area.
We hadn’t spent months trawling Airbnb and stalking all the local restaurants on Instagram. When we got there, it still felt novel and exciting and it didn’t matter that the local pub only served Sunday roasts in the 30-degree heat - we hadn’t plotted out our meals anyway, and ended up barbecuing our own sausages and marshmallows around a firepit, which was far more special than anything we could have planned.
Another joy of a last-minute holiday is that you also often opt for things you wouldn’t have chosen with months to go. Our first morning at Upper Court saw us embarking in an alfresco pottery class just because it was on offer, and why not? If we’d opted for Brighton, we’d have probably just followed our London routine and settled in for brunch. But chatting to owner and pottery instructor Oriel about Upper Court’s family history was far more memorable, as was meeting her golden Labrador and other guests from around the country as we wandered around the grounds.
Pottery and dog-petting were just the beginning of our day of activities: after a walk up to a viewpoint on nearby Bredon Hill, a game of croquet and a trip on the boating lake, we were far more excited to dive into a pool, settle in for a BBQ and cosy up on our four-poster beds than we would have been if we’d booked an expensive evening meal or night out ahead of time. Staze allowed us to embrace the last-minute, not fear it (and dodge the stress of ever-changing coronavirus restrictions).
The best part? Staze promises to always be cheaper than AirBnb or Booking.com, offering to price-match if theirs is more expensive. We didn’t have to trawl through Google or AirBnb for hours, we didn’t have to research the area (Staze offers a handy guide for each location), and we didn’t have to shop around for the best deal once we’d found somewhere.
In a couple of taps on the app, we were booked in and on our way to a new area feeling like we were off on a proper adventure. After a year of having to live more spontaneously, staycationing last-minute felt like the most fitting holiday of all.
From £70 to £1,000 per night, staze.com
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