Staynex has announced Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean as "The Phoenix," its second celebrity-powered AI Travel Concierge, joining football legend Patrice Evra on the Web3 travel platform.
Author: Sahil Thakur
6th May 2026 – Staynex has announced Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean as “The Phoenix,” its second celebrity-powered AI Travel Concierge, joining football legend Patrice Evra on the Web3 travel platform.
High Signal Summary For A Quick Glance
Steady attention without excessive speculation.
The announcement came on May 5, 2026, through Staynex’s official X account and Instagram. Grosjean’s AI persona joins Evra’s “AI Travel Wingman,” which went live in late April 2026 and already handles hotel searches and itinerary building.
Staynex now operates two celebrity-voiced AI concierges on a platform that claims to search over 2.65 million hotel properties. The system generates personalized travel itineraries in roughly 90 seconds while integrating booking and $STAY token rewards.
The Staynex AI Travel Concierge is a conversational AI travel agent that uses digital twins of real celebrities. Each concierge features the celebrity’s face, voice clone, and travel expertise to chat with users naturally.
Evra’s version, branded the “AI Travel Wingman,” is accessible at ai.staynex.vip. It searches hotel inventory from over 2.65 million properties, applies budget and preference filters, and builds day-by-day itineraries. The tool also supports multi-language input.
This is not a simple recommendation engine. The concierge functions as a voice-first trip planner that can handle full booking flows. Staynex gained this booking capability after acquiring Swiss hotel-tech startup Sleap.io in April 2026.
Grosjean earned the “Phoenix” nickname after surviving a fiery crash at the 2020 Bahrain Grand Prix. He competed in Formula 1 from 2009 to 2020 before transitioning to IndyCar. His personal brand carries strong recognition across motorsport and global sports audiences.
Staynex did not release a direct quote from Grosjean. The announcement appeared exclusively on the company’s social media channels. Specific details about whether his AI concierge is fully live or still rolling out remain unclear at this time.
Evra, by contrast, has been a Staynex partner since December 2024. He was named the official Travel Ambassador on December 20, 2024, and his AI Wingman launched in late April 2026.
“Travel has always been a way to connect with people and cultures,” Evra said at the time of his appointment. “I’m proud to be the official travel ambassador for Staynex, a brand that’s transforming how we experience the world through technology.”
The AI concierges run on hotel inventory that Staynex acquired through its purchase of Sleap.io. That deal, announced on April 8, 2026, was valued at approximately $15 million.
Sleap.io was a Swiss-based hotel booking technology startup founded in 2023. The acquisition added European booking infrastructure, inventory access, and an experienced technical team to Staynex’s operations.
“This acquisition is exactly what Staynex needs to accelerate our global ambitions,” said Group CEO Yuen Wong in the announcement. “Combining their platform with our token ecosystem and community, ahead of our April milestones, gives us a significant strategic advantage.”
Coverage from PhocusWire, EU-Startups, and Travel Daily News confirmed the deal details. The acquisition was an off-chain corporate transaction with no direct on-chain token movement.
Staynex’s native token, $STAY, is a BEP-20 token on the BNB Smart Chain. The token generation event (TGE) occurred on April 23, 2026, with listings on KuCoin and LBank.
At launch, $STAY traded at $0.00035 with a fully diluted valuation of $35 million. Total supply sits at 100 billion tokens, with 3% circulating at TGE. According to available data, there were no VC or private funding rounds, and team tokens remain locked.
As of May 6, 2026, the token trades at approximately $0.000057 to $0.000058, according to CoinGecko. That represents a decline of roughly 83% from the launch price. The 24-hour trading volume hovers around $2 million, with a current market cap near $5.7 million.
No noticeable price movement followed the May 5 Grosjean announcement, based on available market data.
Staynex is headquartered in Singapore. Yuen Wong serves as Group CEO and founder. Jeff Hoffman, co-founder of Priceline and Booking.com, joined as Chairman around October 2025.
Hoffman’s involvement was covered by Cointelegraph in late 2025. His travel-industry credentials add weight to the project’s positioning in the Web3 travel space.
The platform combines zero-markup hotel bookings, AI-powered travel planning, and a Travel-to-Earn rewards system. Users earn $STAY tokens on bookings, with additional utility through NFT membership tiers and staking mechanics.
Celebrity partnerships in crypto often attract skepticism. Many Web3 projects have used famous names purely for marketing, with limited product integration. Staynex takes a different approach by embedding celebrities as functional AI personas inside a live, booking-capable product.
That said, the approach still carries risks common to celebrity-backed crypto projects. Grosjean’s and Evra’s exact compensation and equity arrangements remain undisclosed. The technical stack powering the AI voice clones and conversational system has not been publicly detailed either.
As of May 6, 2026, no major outlets like CoinDesk, Bloomberg, or Skift have covered the Grosjean announcement specifically. Reporting remains concentrated in crypto and travel-tech niche publications like The Block, PhocusWire, and Cointelegraph.
Staynex now has two celebrity AI concierges, a live booking engine with 2.65 million hotel properties, and a token listed on two exchanges. The next test is whether this combination drives real user adoption and booking volume.
The Grosjean announcement expands Staynex’s celebrity roster beyond football into motorsport. If the platform adds more AI concierges across different sports and entertainment verticals, it could build a distinctive niche in the crowded Web3 travel market.
For now, the product is live and accessible. Travelers can interact with Evra’s AI Wingman at ai.staynex.vip. Whether Grosjean’s “The Phoenix” concierge is fully operational or still in rollout has not been confirmed by Staynex.
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