Meet the founders of We Go Greenr, a Bordeaux start-up

In 2019, Stéphane and Marie-Pierre were both “satisfied” with their respective careers in retail and nobody had ever heard of a virus named ‘corona’. While they were perfectly content, they felt a desire to become better consumers and had a growing hunger to start a project to that end. The months passed and their shared values began to grate with their jobs “that push people to keep on consuming, more and more”.

Young couple looking for eco-responsible accommodation

The holidays came around, that time when you can press the pause button on more or less everything, except they couldn’t suppress this urge to be responsible consumers: “We wanted to carry on what we had put in place for the rest of the year, but it took us a very long time to find ecological accommodation”, Marie-Pierre explains. She continues: “There were some places that were more eco-responsible than others, but it wasn’t easy to see what their concrete commitments were”.

Also, the couple noticed that it is easier to find eco-responsible accommodation abroad than in their own country. This disappointment then turned into an opportunity for Stéphane and Marie-Pierre, who felt an idea stirring, taking shape. Their desire to both take on a new challenge aligned with their personal convictions and work in the travel sector led to them launching their business in spring 2019.

From dream to reality: the birth of an eco-responsible booking platform

Once they resigned from their jobs, they started off by learning code, plus the ins and outs of the web. Their idea was to “get stuck in and find out the inner workings of the internet so that we could launch our project efficiently”, confides Marie-Pierre. Then, they got in touch with 200 hosts and travellers to understand how each of them approached the industry and what problems might arise. The young entrepreneurs swiftly spotted a significant difficulty: supply was struggling to connect with demand. Thanks to their patience and motivation, the couple decided to break away from the established, somewhat outdated norms of sustainable tourism and worked towards a democratisation of the sector. Having figured out their strategy, all they needed to do - though it was no mean feat - was create the We Go GreenR platform.

Thanks to around one hundred criteria and a green score, which measures each establishment’s eco-responsibility commitment, future guests have a clear idea of what the place where they’ll be spending their holidays is like. While the average score for hosts is 3/5 on average, 8 out of 10 professionals would like to take more steps towards eco-responsibility. The good news for them is that We Go GreenR offers personalised assistance, notably in the form of training and negotiated partnerships with energy providers.

We Go GreenR: an Anglophone name but a French success story

Having received support from cultural incubator Le Campement for a year, We Go GreenR has come a long way since it began. Today, the small business has its offices in Darwin and employs six people; it’s growing quickly. The website had 100,000 visitors in 2020 despite a year that was marked by a lot of disruption, and 1000 different establishments have joined its accommodation listings. That said, the start-up isn’t taking any of this for granted, as they are preparing to raise some funds and are looking to recruit from sectors far and wide. Their goal is to reach 1000 bookings in 2021 and list 1500 different accommodation options.

As for the Anglo-Saxon origins of their name, it sets the tone for the future: “We wanted to choose an international name to develop our concept beyond our borders later on”, Marie-Pierre jokes. “The R (pronounced in French like the word ‘air’) is a nod to the air that we breathe and refers to how we aim to go above and beyond!”. It’s worth betting that this startup will easily reach their goals in the years to come…

Information and bookings : We Go GreenR.