Arnaud and Junjun at Google HQ, Zurich
Hi everyone
This is my first blog entry since joining the HouseTrip team a few weeks ago, shortly after launch. And it’s been a hectic first few weeks! But the signs are really promising. The team is great: the organisation is very dynamic, and most importantly, everyone is extremely nice to work with! We’re now acquiring new properties quite fast – many of them are really quite special, do take a look – and there’s a lot of interest generally. I’ve spoken to quite a few of our new hosts personally and they’re really positive about the platform and the innovative features we offer.
We had a great day today! Arnaud’s been negotiating with Google for a few weeks now, after he met a Google high flyer at a CEO day who expressed an interest in collaborating with us to maximise our AdWords expediency. So today we headed up to Zurich, home of Google’s European HQ, for a meeting with two of their senior account managers. We had a very productive discussion, we learnt a lot about some of the secrets behind good AdWords campaigns, and best of all, they treated us to lunch! The office is amazing, lots of cool features and the vibe seemed quite laid back although we all got the impression that the employees were extremely high calibre. The working atmosphere seemed very positive, empowering and inspiring: exactly the kind of atmosphere we aim to cultivate and maintain as HouseTrip grows.
The people we met were very enthusiastic about HouseTrip, they thought it was a really great project and that it would be well suited to AdWords campaigns. So I’m really looking forward to working with the Google guys and over the coming weeks and months I think we can create some really powerful campaigns to spread the word about our great website!
I’ll post again soon with another update!
Ciao for now
Ben
Dear readers,
I haven’t written for a while: the past few days have been rather hectic with the launch!
As an introduction to HouseTrip, we have done a short video explaining how it works for the hosts. You can watch it below. Enjoy!
HouseTrip for the hosts
Dear readers,
After months of work, I am proud to tell you that HouseTrip will go live tomorrow – monday – night!
Special thanks to our developers who have done an amazing job since they started working on the website in the beginning of May. Special thanks as well to all the other members of our great team for months of brilliant work! And of course we are really grateful to all the people who have supported us in the first step of our fantastic venture!
However, it is only the beginning. I am sure that in a few months I’ll be thanking all our users for traveling with HouseTrip! Early feedbacks from the closed beta are very good: HouseTrip is on its way to revolutionize the way you travel! So dear – future – users, add your properties, stay at properties, … time to enjoy all the services we enjoyed developing for you!
All the best,
Arnaud
… in Paris at the E-Commerce fair on the 29th, 30th of September and 1st of October. We will be in the “innovation village”.
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…we just changed the design of the blog. Do you like it?
Arnaud
Dear reader,
Are you interested to being one of the first 100 HouseTrip host? Apply now to rent out your space (guestroom, city flat, villa, castle, etc.) and we let you earn €1′000 from your rentals…for free! No listing fee, no commission, nothing is charged to you until you’ve made €1′000! In addition, this offer is non-binding: just leave the website at any time if you don’t like it.
You will also be able to enjoy the following benefits:
- Complete description of your space with unlimited pictures
- Free online Property Management System to manage all your bookings and availability
- Choose your guests: look at their profiles and decide who can stay at your place
- When it makes sense (for instance during a large event where your space is located), you can auction certain dates: only the highest bidders will get to stay at your space during those dates
- Easy payment system: your guests pay us with their credit cards and we transfer the money directly to your bank account
- And many more fun and practical features!
And of course you’ll be able to enjoy a very nice profile page for your space like the one below:
To apply or if you need more information, please send an email to info@housetrip.com by providing a short description of the space you would rent out (or your questions if you want more information). In the email, don’t hesitate to mention if you would like to participate to a live demonstration of the website by one of our team members.If you are selected, we will send you an email indicating when and how you should post your listing on housetrip.com
Best regards and please spread the word around you!
Arnaud
Michael Levie, the CEO of CitizenM, probably the most exciting new hotel chain out there, just joined HouseTrip’s advisory board.
Michael has an impressive travel and hotel record allied to a unique vision for the industry. Upon graduating from IHMI, he worked for various international hotel chains including Sonesta Hotels and NH Hoteles all over the world. As Vice-President of Operations he managed large portfolios of hotels. Michael also worked for SynXis, where he started and headed the European office. Michael, together with a team of partners, then conceived the CitizenM brand after assessing what he saw as a stagnant mid-market hotel industry.
We are obviously very excited about the prospects for HouseTrip and are delighted to be working with Michael who will bring a highly value-added perspective to our advisory board.
Dear readers,
I just thought I would give you a quick update on our status.
To start with, let me give you an appetizer of the HouseTrip website (this is a screenshot of our homepage in its current state):
You may have noticed: the colors changed quite drastically from this blog! We think that light and peaceful colors like those are much better since our users (and especially the hosts) will spend quite some time on the website. As well, when looking at it, it makes you think about holiday much more than this blog’s original pink/red color. Sky blue, grass green and sandy yellow are likely to put everyone in a vacation mood! Very soon we will also update this blog with the new colors.
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For the second consecutive year, the IFJ organized the Venture Summit event and this time HouseTrip was represented!
The concept: to take Switzerland’s “top” one-hundred people in the entrepreneurship field and send them for 24 hours in the nature. No sleep, lots of sport, drinking and extreme networking!
This year, we all went to the Jungfraujoch, in the middle of the Swiss Alps.
The Jungfrau summit
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The Swiss National Start-Up Team (I am in the top right corner, second from left 
I just come back from a great 10-day trip in Boston with the other winners of the “Venture Leaders” competition which together constitute the “Swiss National Start-Up Team”.
The program, prepared by VentureLab and Swissnex Boston (the consulate of Switzerland lead by Pascal Marmier), was really what every entrepreneur can dream to have for his project. Check this: workshops with high-profile entrepreneurs, coaching sessions by teachers of the Babson College, successful start-ups visits, negotiation trainings, networking sessions with investors, pitch competitions, etc.
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