Stayingreece

We are a group of graduates from Athens University of Economics and Business, with vision and creativity. We have all been in many different countries of Europe with the Erasmus exchange program and we have lived this unique once-in-a-lifetime experience. During our stay abroad we noticed that the biggest difficulty of the Erasmus exchange program, apart from the language, is the lack of an accommodation system for foreign students that visit a country for a short term period. When we came back to Athens in and became members of the Erasmus student association ESN, we faced the issue of accommodation once again, this time having to find accommodation for the incoming Erasmus students of our University. By that time, the number of incoming foreign students had already begun to increase in AUEB, and we were trying to help them and to meet their needs in terms of housing. We organized a voluntary group whose main purpose was to find houses and match them with the incoming students. For 6 years, the group offered its services in a volunteer basis. But by 2006 we faced the challenge of covering 150 requests from Erasmus students for accommodation per academic semester. Finding homes and taking care of incoming students became so time consuming, that it took a great part of our lives. This is why we decided in 2007 to make this part of our lives, that we really enjoyed our job. So, in 2007 we founded StayInAthens. This company began by presenting houses for rent over the Internet but has come to mean much more to the community for Erasmus students in Athens.