I have more content on lodging options than any other topic on this website. That’s primarily because it’s the most costly and complicated part of travel once you’ve worked out transportation (and often it’s even more expensive than transportation). Also I’m inspired by the many sharing economy lodging options that offer free (or nearly free) places to stay with some great opportunities to interact with locals. Today’s updates cover some news and some newcomers to the peer to peer lodging space.
Hospitality lodging
Trustroots – This couchsurfing alternative offers a platform for peer to peer hospitality lodging focused on the hitchhiking community. Launched in 2015.
Hotels invest in sharing economy lodging
In an interesting funding twist, hotels are getting in on the sharing economy lodging business. Hyatt hotels invested in OneFineStay, a London-based company that offers curated high end peer to peer rentals in major cities. Onefinestay is well-backed financially, receiving $16 million worth of investments in 2012, followed by this latest $40 million round at the end of 2014, which included Hyatt.
Not to be outdone, Wyndam hotels invested in the home exchange network LoveHomeSwap, a stake the Financial Times estimates at £7.5m.
Peer to peer rentals
Tentrr – This new peer to peer campsite rental network joins a handful of similar websites that encourage people to offer their backyard or other empty space to campers looking for a place to set up their tent. Tentrr is primarily in Upstate NY right now.
Rental metasearch
Holiday rental meta search is a hot area right now. With so many peer to peer rental sites, there’s a clear opportunity to streamline search by pulling together listings just like so many hotel metasearch websites (hotels.com, expedia, etc.) have done. This month there are two newcomers to mention in this space.
HundredRooms just got €1.1m in seed funding. This website is in Spanish and currently focuses on the lodging market in Spain but does have listings in other parts of Europe.
Likibu, another peer to peer rental meta search engine, launched at the end of 2014, and currently aggregates 2,000,000 listings.