Your Modern Guide to the Cotswolds
ABOUT COTSWOLD STAYS
Cotswold Stays started with a simple idea: make it easier to find the bits of the Cotswolds that are genuinely worth your time — then connect those places into a trip that actually works.
We’re building the site from the ground up as a local editorial guide first, a handpicked collection of stays second, and eventually a useful accommodation platform — without turning it into an endless directory of everything with a postcode.
WHY IT EXISTS
There are already plenty of websites that can give you 300 search results. We want to do something different: explain which village suits which trip, which pub is worth the detour, which attraction actually works with children, and which stay makes a useful base rather than simply looking good in photographs.
That means the site will never be finished in the traditional sense. We’ll keep adding places, correcting details, improving photography and linking everything together as the collection grows.
WHAT WE'RE BUILDING
Evergreen Destination and Place guides that help you decide where to go and what is worth doing once you get there.
A smaller, curated accommodation collection built around character, useful locations and properties we would genuinely recommend.
Timely articles, itineraries and practical round-ups that connect the permanent guides into real weekends and days out.
We’re building the supply side too: inviting distinctive cottages, apartments, farm stays and independent hotels into the Founding Collection.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND IT
Cotswold Stays is being built by people who are close enough to the places and properties to notice the details. No enormous anonymous content team, and no pretending we have personally stayed in every property on day one.
M
Founder & Editorial Director
Miles joins the dots: strategy, editorial, the website and systems, partnerships, commercial plans and inevitably whatever else needs doing that week.
E
Operations & Administration Lead
Ellie keeps the practical side moving: administration, coordination, owner and guest details, and the jobs that stop good ideas becoming an organisational mess.
M
Property & Maintenance Lead
Mark brings the property-owner perspective and the practical maintenance support that matters when accommodation has to work in real life, not just photograph well.
K
Housekeeping & Guest Experience Lead
Kim looks after the standards guests actually notice: housekeeping, presentation and front-of-house experience, with an eye for the small details that make a stay feel cared for.
The next step is to build enough excellent accommodation inventory to make Stays genuinely useful. The first 50 accepted properties can join the Founding Collection free for 12 months. Later, once the audience and integrations justify it, we plan to add better filtering, live availability and optional direct booking.
The important bit is the order: build trust and useful content first; add marketplace mechanics when they make the experience better rather than simply more complicated.