About ZenStay
Built by a builder.
ZenStay was founded by Arvand Sabetian — an engineer and lifelong technologist who has spent two decades turning clunky, opaque industries into transparent, tech-enabled ones. Boutique hospitality is the latest.
Founder
Arvand Sabetian.
Founder & CEO
Arvand is a civil engineer by training — Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo — and an entrepreneur by instinct. At seventeen he started a web-hosting company, Arvixe, and grew it into an eight-figure business before selling it in 2014.
He began investing in real estate in 2012, and in 2018 founded Ziprent, a property-management company built on the idea that would come to define ZenStay: pair genuinely good technology with genuine transparency, and give people a better deal than the incumbents.
Today, as a licensed general contractor, he both builds and runs boutique hotels — developing them through GTB Group and operating them through ZenStay. Casa Iglesia, the former First Christian Church he restored into a 37-room hotel in downtown Santa Barbara, is the clearest expression of the approach.
The through-line
Technology should make a stay feel effortless — never replace the people who make it warm.
The same conviction runs through everything Arvand has built: good technology and radical transparency, applied to industries that never had enough of either. In hospitality, that means contact-light hotels run by real people, and an owner model with nothing hidden.
How it shows up
One company, end to end.
We build what we run
Because we develop and operate our own hotels, every design decision is made with the guest experience — and the operating model — in mind.
Technology that disappears
Self check-in, smart rooms, and 24/7 human support — the tech clears the friction so people can focus on hospitality.
Character worth preserving
An eye for adaptive reuse and historic buildings — interiors led by designer Shaliz Nakashima — turns distinctive spaces into places with a story.