All three come from Rügen (from left to right): Project Bay founders Hannes Trettin, Nico Gramenz and Toni Gurski. Project Bay
When Hannes Trettin and Toni Gurski long for salty sea air and wide beaches, it’s not just because they’re ready for a vacation. The two are islanders and spent their childhood together on Rügen on the Baltic Sea. After graduating from school, they still decided to leave the island. “We always said that there was a reason why we left there because we couldn’t live out our professional dreams,†says Trettin. “At the same time, we have decided to create something that can change the situation on site and give young people a perspective.“
However, the founders did not implement the plan straight away. While Trettin initially went to Berlin to study industrial engineering and work, Gurski went to Schwerin. There the IT developer built his first project: Kitedrop, an interactive platform on which kite surfers can exchange ideas and mark special beaches and spots for water sports on a map. In 2018, the childhood friends founded their first joint startup Snazz from different locations – a sustainable fashion consultancy. The idea was to evaluate social media data for fashion manufacturers to avoid producing excess clothing and better distribute items across locations.
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What they were still missing was a larger team: “We realized that we needed something special to attract employees – especially developers,” says Trettin, who was previously a manager -Trainee at Bosch. At the same time, the founder of the startup network Factory Berlin, from where he built his company, experienced that people often reacted with envy when they heard that he was from Rügen.
From fashion software to workation startup
“I didn’t notice it that way before, but then I thought, why not use it to acquire people more easily,” says Trettin. His idea: Open co-working spaces with overnight accommodation on Rügen. At a community event he met the CEO of Factory Berlin, Nico Gramenz, to whom he briefly and succinctly presented his idea. “Do you know that I’m also from Rügen?“ is all he said he asked. The matter was as good as settled for the three of them.
Their startup Project Bay, which Trettin and Gurski officially founded in 2020 and which Gramenz joined as the third co-founder in January 2023, is now a workation platform. Digital nomads traveling alone or with a partner, as well as teams sent from the company for a work session, can book through it. The founders are jumping on a trend that has gained momentum during the pandemic: in one repräsentativen Study, the PwC in 2023, around two thirds of the 1,000 respondents said that work was an important job criterion for them. Popular models include escaping the cold winter in Germany or extending a private vacation.
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Founders plan to open 130 locations by 2026
The startup has opened a total of 13 locations so far, preferably in rural regions with a swimming lake or near the coast. These include Rostock, Usedom, Sylt, Wismar, Schwerin, Waren on the Müritz and two on Rügen. So far, “Bays” on Mallorca, in Kitzbühel and in Bela in Slovakia are the locations that the startup has used outside of Germany. A total of 32 locations have been signed so far. In the next three years, the founders want to expand their offering to around 130 locations. The startup most recently raised a six-figure sum from business angels in the summer of 2023. The next round of financing is scheduled to follow this year.
By focusing on German islands and green health resorts in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the founders want to consciously oppose overcrowded trendy regions such as Bali, Cape Town, Koh Samui or Lisbon. “Working at larger companies looks more like employees wanting to extend their ski weekend in Kitzbühel,” says Gramenz. In addition, “beautiful corners of Germany” have become more visible due to the restricted travel during the pandemic, says co-founder Trettin. The boom in camping trips since 2020 also speaks for this. In general, many sustainability aspects now play a role in the choice of work location. “I see a drastic change in that people are now looking more at local places that can be traveled to by train,” says Trettin.
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Hotels provide rooms, Project Bay provides Wi-Fi and desks
In his opinion, the workation offering in Germany is still limited. The founders of Project Bay do not see providers such as the hotel startup Numa or serviced apartment players such as Limehome or Stayery, which also specifically target business travelers with accommodation that can be booked for a longer period of time, as direct competition.
Instead of building new accommodation, the founders use existing hotel capacity. They receive a commission for finding additional guests: between 18 and 20 percent, depending on the season. Especially in the off-season, in winter and spring, only a few guests find their way to the hotels on the German coast. The business would still have to be kept running; employees would no longer only be employed seasonally. “The hotels have power on, people are there, but the parking lot is empty. If we bring the two worlds together and integrate remote workers and workationers from companies here, it would mean a huge boost for the development of these regions,” says Gramenz.
In order to create an optimal working atmosphere in which there are enough desks, comfortable seats, stable WiFi and data protection, the founders are converting previously provided hotel rooms into large co-working spaces. Trettin says: “We take care of the technical infrastructure. But when it comes to the overnight experience, others can do it much better.†In addition, companies would prefer to work with one workation provider rather than with several hotels, says the founder.
Local tech community aims to counteract the brain drain of talent in regions
The startup also regularly organizes community events there in consultation with the respective regions. Because that’s what their project is ultimately about: enabling exchange between locals and workationers, improving the bad image of tourism and giving something back to economically dependent regions: a business network. At the same time, Trettin, Gurski and Gramenz set up the company builder Herofounders, which is aimed specifically at tech founders from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Gramenz says: “But this shouldn’t be a theoretical network. “You first have to create common spaces to talk about what the problem is in the regions and bring different groups together to do this.”
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The events are intended to prevent workationers from remaining more than tourists: namely, mainly among themselves and disappearing again after their stay. “In the best case scenario, as we have seen on Rügen for example, guests are so enthusiastic about the individual regions that they can even imagine moving there,†says Trettin. “Then you have reached the maximum for rural areas.” Conversely, according to the founder’s vision, the network would also create a kind of job market for remote work. Companies looking for young talent could find them through the local initiative. In turn, local young professionals would meet companies that they probably would not have encountered otherwise and would have to leave less. “When I think about my own youth on Rügen, I couldn’t have imagined that I would meet people from Apple, Microsoft or Siemens there,” says Trettin.
Project Bay wants to become “Netflix for Workation”.
According to the founders, remote workers from large tech companies such as Apple or VW have often booked a workation through Project Bay. The Edeka group checks in regularly in Lietzow on Rügen. So far these have mainly been individual bookings. In addition, workation quotas work well for developers of small and medium-sized software and IT companies, “because they have to compete against Google and Co. and are looking for ways to differentiate themselves,” says Gramenz. Companies can use the portal to request four-day team workations or month-long, intensive boot camps for the peak phase of projects.
In the long term, the startup wants to establish a type of membership for business customers, through which teams can be accommodated for a total of three months to work at locations that change one week or every four weeks. The fact that three months in total are not exceeded is due to labor law reasons in the EU. Companies pay around 2,500 euros per employee per month for the package. In addition to hotel rooms, team members get access to co-working spaces, can take part in events and further training at the Bay, receive additional meeting rooms and a so-called “community manager” as a permanent contact person on site.
A similar three-month package is also available for self-employed digital nomads who travel alone or with a partner. For two people, each person pays 875 euros per month; the individual tariff is 1,500 euros per month. “We want to build a Netflix for Workation,” says Gramenz, explaining the goal. And just as the streaming service makes suggestions for films and series that are similar to the user’s taste, Gramenz can also imagine that her app will recommend the next work destination to customers in the future.
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The founders found their first accommodation in the community of Lietzow on Rügen by chance at the end of 2019. “We used the first lockdown to do a lot on site. When people were allowed to travel again, we immediately had a boom,” says Trettin. In the first year of 2020, the location immediately made a profit, “even though we were only able to open for four months because of Corona,” said the founder. Last year, Lietzow said it had a turnover of half a million euros and the founders counted almost 2,600 overnight stays there. They are confident that things will continue like this. Above all, Trettin, Gurski and Gramenz hope to build a sustainable, local business network in their hometown of Rügen. So that fewer young talents have to leave to get a job in the cities. By the way, your first startup Snazz is still around. Instead of the analysis platform for the fashion industry, it is now building the software for Project Bay.