Rental lodging

Priceline Meets AirBnb: FlatClub Introduces Bidding for Peer to Peer Rentals

flatclub-logotype-color-tmFlatClub is one of over 30 peer to peer lodging rental websites that I’ve looked at, in an arena where AirBnB is dominating the press. To me FlatClub was not particularly interesting in such a crowded field of peer to peer rental lodging, until recently when they launched a new feature, LiveDemand, which allows guests to post requests for lodging, including the price they are willing to pay, and then hosts can bid on these requests.  For instance, I see requests from people going to London for a few months, willing to pay anywhere from £300 to £2000 per month. This makes a lot of sense for the mid-length stays that are FlatClub’s sweet spot, not long enough to merit a rental of an apartment, but longer than a few nights where it might be better to search on one of the larger peer to peer rental sites.

FlatClub distinguishes themselves with rentals focusing on longer term stays, with the average stay being 30 days. In addition, they are built around “clubs” of verified university and corporate members which people can join and then post or search for apartments within their club exclusively.  Their goal to bring together “people with common values and needs” is one way to tackle the trust problem in peer to peer businesses. Though this means they leave out a lot of people as their clubs only include elite universities and a few large and successful companies. It’s also possible to just search (or post) apartments without using the club feature.

The LiveDemand feature is new in July 2014, though FlatClub piloted LiveDemand with 400 selected hosts already so it should be up and running well at this point. I wouldn’t mind seeing other peer to peer lodging sites copy this feature for shorter term stays, making the search potentially easier on both sides. This eliminates the problem of inactive hosts who never respond to requests, and also makes for more competition in pricing based on demand and relative availability and individual host’s rental needs.