# Biography

> Who Mohammed Lachgar is: from Tiflet to co-founder and managing director of StayHere and co-founder of StayCapital.

- Canonical: https://mrlachgar.ma/about
- Language: en
- Publisher: Mohammed Lachgar (first-party, editorially maintained)
- Updated: 2026-08-30
- Verified: 2026-08-30

Mohammed Lachgar is a Moroccan hospitality operator and investor. The shortest way to understand him: when everyone goes right, he looks left.

He grew up in Tiflet, a small city an hour from Rabat, and didn't wait for permission to start. At sixteen he was running websites monetised through AdSense and Facebook communities that grew past ten million fans — a teenager with a small team working for him before he had sat his baccalaureate. Nobody on the other side of those pages knew. The money paid for his studies — web technologies in Rabat, then a bachelor's at FST Settat, top of his class in both — and bought him something rarer than a degree: the freedom to skip the master's and go look at the world instead.

From 2015 to 2019 the world was Southeast Asia — Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore — the business running remotely on an hour or two a day while he studied, without quite meaning to, how the best places on earth receive a traveller. The people he met had heard too little about Morocco, and the ones who had been said the same thing: the country amazed them, the stay didn't. That stung. In 2016 he decided the fix would start with him; in 2017 he bought one apartment in Rabat and turned it into a furnished short-term rental. By early 2020 he was managing seven.

He came home for good in February 2020 — married the previous June, straight off a long honeymoon across Asia — and forty days later the borders closed. Hotels shut. Everyone ran out of hospitality; he walked in. He messaged operators about taking over their portfolios, and one Instagram DM — an acquisition pitch to Mohamed Benzakour — turned into a partnership instead. In June 2020 they founded StayHere: three suites in Agdal, $30,000 each of their own money, no hotel, no debt, no outside capital. Their first hire, Mina, ran housekeeping; on heavy checkout days both founders cleaned rooms beside her. Six years on, she is still with the company. So is the habit.

Three suites became thirty within a year, and three hundred within five. As managing director he leads the group's technology infrastructure, finance, distribution, acquisition channels and the systems behind operations. As of August 2026 StayHere runs 10 addresses and more than 300 suites across Rabat, Casablanca, Agadir and Essaouira, with more than 100 collaborators and over 10,000 verified guest reviews.

He is also a co-founder of StayCapital (Partner, Growth & Technology), where the StayHere founders put their own capital into hotels and apart-hotels and bring private investors in alongside them. Since February 2024 he has served as treasurer of the Regional Tourism Council of Rabat-Salé-Kénitra.

Since 2025 he has documented the work itself: short, twenty-minute day-in-the-life films, and "Behind the Hotel", a series showing what building hotels actually involves — meetings, wins, losses — so hotel investment stops being a black box for people outside the industry. He organises his weeks in seasons — a studio season, a StayCapital season, a business or family season — giving most of his focus to one mission at a time.

His stated ambition for 2030: one of Africa's leading hospitality investment platforms — and a Moroccan hotel brand operating worldwide that Moroccans are proud of.

The operating thesis hasn't moved since the first suite: hospitality is an operating problem. Product, pricing and distribution decide how a building performs — not the other way around. Or, as he put it in *L'Opinion*: hospitality is not a building, it is a feeling — the feeling of being expected.

## Key figures

- 10 — Addresses: StayHere operates 10 addresses across Rabat, Casablanca and Agadir (August 2026).
- 4 — Cities: StayHere operates in Rabat, Casablanca, Agadir and Essaouira (August 2026).
- 100+ — Collaborators: More than 100 collaborators across the StayHere group (August 2026).
- 40M+ MAD — Group revenue (2024): StayHere group revenue exceeded 40 million dirhams in 2024.
- 10,000+ — Verified guest reviews: More than 10,000 verified guest reviews across the StayHere portfolio (August 2026).
- 300+ — Suites in operation: More than 300 suites in operation across the StayHere portfolio (August 2026).

## Sources

- L’Opinion — “StayHere ou le pari d’une nouvelle génération d’hôteliers”, print edition, 14–16 August 2026, pp. 10–11 — consulted 2026-08-30
- [Hespress — «قصة | محمد الشكر», 06/11/2024](https://www.hespress.com/%D9%82%D8%B5%D8%A9-%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D9%83%D8%B1-1460082.html) — accessed 2026-08-30
- [StayHere — About](https://stayhere.ma/about-us/) — accessed 2026-08-30
- [StayHere website](https://stayhere.ma) — accessed 2026-08-30
- [StayCapital website](https://staycapital.ma) — accessed 2026-08-30
- Mohammed Lachgar — first-party statement (2026) — consulted 2026-08-30
- [CHR Magazine, 24/08/2026](https://chrmagazine.ma/stayhere-un-modele-marocain-dhospitalite-entre-residences-lifestyle-et-experience-locale/) — accessed 2026-08-30