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IT COULD BE the eHarmony of the accommodation-sharing world.
Not that the brains behind Homestay.com, the latest Irish startup starting to make waves in the global business arena, particularly want to be compared to a matchmaking website.
But in the same way the dating site shook up the industry by offering a more-personalised experience, so one of the newest entrants to the burgeoning “sharing economy” could rock Airbnb’s stranglehold on the shared-accommodation sector.
“If you think about how eHarmony disrupted Match, essentially it was around finding the right attributes or questions to ask as you build profiles,” chief executive Alan Clarke told TheJournal.ie.
“We’re thinking about the same sort of process – how do you make sure that a host in Homestay is going to say: ‘Oh, I always get the right guests so that’s why I list my site on Homestay’.
And guests will also say: ‘I always get a fantastic experience on Homestay because the nature of the host I went to was exactly what I was expecting’.”
Only a year old but away and running
While it started life to smooth and take the process of students looking for hosted accommodation online, Clarke said the site’s backers quickly discovered that everyone from holidaymakers to those relocating were after a similar experience.
The Dublin-based company now has “nearly” 35,000 hosts signed up of which about 15,000 are live for bookings despite launching its site only a little over 12 months ago.
But the rapid-fire growth is not altogether surprising as the company has serious pedigree behind it in founders Debbie Flynn and Tom Kennedy, one of two men who jointly started Hostelworld to tear up the rules for the hostel-booking industry.
Homestay’s latest figures showed its average holidaying guest stayed a lazy 12 nights, compared to 20 nights for students, although Clarke said the company had just taken a booking for a guest headed to South America for 211 nights.
He said the biggest problem at the moment was signing up enough hosts to keep pace with booking demand.
‘People-based travel’
Clarke said that over the next few months, the company would also be trying to breath more life into its concept of “people-based travel” – finding the right ways to connect hosts with the most suitable guests and vice versa.
“Athough the price is probably cheaper than some of the other alternative accommodation options, primarily people are choosing to book a homestay because it’s about meeting new people,” he said.
“Equally on the host side, when you ask people about their motivation for hosting, earning cash is a reason, but meeting new people and having a cultural experience are as important or even more important.”
One planned move was to introduce video chatting in the booking process to cut down on any potential “friction” between guests and hosts, while another would be matching peoples’ interests and expectations.
How about a night at the pub… or day at the beach?
A guest coming to Ireland could expect a visit to the local pub as part of the experience, for example, while a Sydney-based host might include a trip to the beach in their offering.
Clarke said people had been using homestay products for “decades” – the only difference was until now the work of choosing and booking a host wasn’t being done online.
“I think the process of booking a homestay, because there is always host present, is different (to Airbnb) - where and at what price are important factors in the decision-making process for us, but who is an equally important part.”
READ: Carol Bergin came to Ireland on a homestay in 1970… and never left
READ: You can rent an actual ‘self-catering Irish pub’ in Tipperary on Airbnb
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The husband did his very best and ut must have been awful seeing his wife deteriorate but the hosputal unable to cope. Appalling.
Makes me mad that hospital excellence isn’t the prior government priority.
The only priority of this government is to try and fool us all in a couple of years and get back into power
The Government is destroying the public health care system or letting it self destruct. They want the health care for profit. The people should be under no illusion that this will mean even less care for more money. Look at what privation has done to the system in the Netherlands. …..it destroyed it, the country went from one of the most humane efficient systems to one where people are paying enormous sums to private companies for the least cover required by law.
“Dr Peter Boylan says it’s well recognised that Ireland has the lowest number of consultants per head of population in the OECD”. I’d hazard a guess earnings are at the very top levels of the OECD. Pay less, employ more?
Shock horror. Yup, top 2/3 well paid in the OECD even after recent cuts, and twice the pay of uk equivalents. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/irish-hospital-consultants-among-highest-paid-in-the-world-1.1850847
Hospitals are on five day week. Go in Friday wait till Monday for attention.
Consultant salaries have already been cut drastically. The result? There’s a mass shortage as consultants emigrate to North America and Australia for far better pay and conditions.
Not a very smart comment about reducing pay when they can’t recruit consultants (or registrars) to work in these jobs in the first place.
If we could only have centres of fully resourced barely adequate competence instead of centres of excellence that would be a good start. Clearly much more could have been done if the resources were there but we have other priorities in Ireland.
She died because she was in the wrong place from day one, a regional hospital without the expertise, in form of consultants, to recognise and treat her condition effectively before it became irreversible. Shocking.
No, it’s a consequence of hundreds of years of religious oppression and lack of a proper, full abortion legislation.
Daniel with a comment like that you must be trolling
This tragic case had nothing to do with abortion.
You knob.wrong case
Pro-choice think has reached a new high.
And around and around and around we go.! We know whats wrong but we do not know how to fix it. And women die and will continue to die,,,,,,
And men Mary, lack of resources etc is not gender specific.
Bad nursing and medical oversight has more to do with it. This new excuse, which may be valid, seems however to be designed to protect the staff on duty in the ward at the time of the lady’s fatal illness and excuse the HSE management.
That nurse tried her best to say patient needed icu but doctors dont care bout nurses opinions
Not to worry, thaw case will probably be used as an excuse to move maternity services out of Sligo hospital now to Galway or Derry or the moon.
Sad but true Carina.
I think using this case to make a point for more consultants is insensitive in the extreme. Our doctors are highly trained and should have been able to make the calls here. It shouldn’t have needed a consultant (who decided to go off to a clinic…).
A better call would be for the consultants to work in line with a 24x7x365 health service rather than suiting themselves to short days, long weekends and private appointments using public infrastructure. The outcome of those changes would not be ‘debatable’.
Lemon,
It’s strange that you think a consultant who is rostered to work in a clinic outside the hospital is in some way ‘suiting himself’
There aren’t enough consultants to staff a 24/7 roster.
There aren’t enough registrars, or SHOs, or interns either for that matter.
All doctors in ireland work far and away in excess of our contracted hours, in underresourced services stretched too thinly to provide the level of care we would like.
Nonsense about people suiting themselves (who exactly would have covered that clinic?) is unhelpful, and that antagonistic attitude is a big part of why the shortage of medical manpower exists.
Corrigan you dope!
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