Nationality: Swiss/American

Favourite Destination: Orlando, Florida USA. The reason I probably say this at this period in time is because this city is where I spent much of my teenage years in.

Travel Type: The Investigator

Favorite Cocktail: A Classic Mojito

The experience I want to share today is about my trip to Tayrona National park, in the very northern part of the country of Colombia. In the summer of 2010, I traveled for the first time to South America. I set out from Baranquilla, a small city a few hours from the national park, with one of my best friends in a small local bus which brought us to the entrance of the famous park. Having arrived around 16:30, we were told it would take us roughly an hour to walk from the entrance of the park to the camping grounds in the heart of the tropical forest. We figured that we would take our time, take some pictures of the amazing small trail that lied before us and enjoy the moment. In this very hot and humid tropical climate, we managed to see tons of vegetation, various wild animals, including poisonous spiders, swarms of red ants, huge crabs, snakes, and what seemed to be undiscovered beaches only a couple kilometers away from the trail.

After roughly an hour, we see a group of people walking in the opposite direction as us and we ask how long till we arrive at the camp. We were told another 40 minutes… obviously we didn’t realize how slow we had been walking through this dense forest. That’s when all of a sudden; we heard a large thunder rumble and echo through the trees. My friend and I knew we had to get a move on and quick. Within minutes after the first thunder came the rain. As that point, we had to make our way through very thick vegetation and in pouring rain.

It got to the point that we were trying to run through the forest without getting hurt. After about a half hour, we reached the end of this jungle-maze and stumbled upon a large coastal beach. At a distance, we could see the small camping ground and immediately, we had a sense of satisfaction as we had managed to get out of what we thought was the worst part of the trail. However, this is when the storm started to show its true potential, and now that we didn’t have trees to cover the majority of the rain, we were really getting soaked. Lightning seemed to be striking only meters away from us as we ran towards the village. Finally, we make it to the village and the first thing that strike us, are the hundreds of toads just hanging out throughout the camp. As we make our way towards the reception area, our main concern was not stepping on the toads, as they seemed to not care of us what so ever. In the end, we managed to finally get settled in. However, we had completely drowned an IPod, a cell phone, and obviously our clothes were completely soaked as if we had jumped into a pool. As we realized the next couple days, it rains every day from 17:00 till 5:00 in the summer. I look back at this experience and laugh at the craziness my friend and I got ourselves involved in.

Find a great place to stay on HouseTrip

List your place for free on HouseTrip and start renting it out to travellers from all over the world

I was the first one to land at the Aeropuerta de Lisboa. The rest of the team : Rachel, JJ, James, Anders, and Arnaud were all going to meet me at our HouseTrip apartment.
Yes that’s what we do. When we go on a business trip, we all stay together and share a flat.
I already went to Lisbon once but stayed in a gritty hostel…Not the best memory of my life… I was just really excited about discovering how it would feel to get the keys of our own place. It was just super easy. I picked up my luggage and called my host Jose. He would meet me at front 20 minutes later. I jumped in a cab, and drove to Rua San Antonio in the heart of the old city.
When I got there Jose was already waiting for me. Just a quick note on the way, he didn’t know I was working for HouseTrip. I wanted to get the real chance of experiencing my first HouseTrip and wanted him to be 100% natural. He kindly carried up my luggage and showed me around the apartment. I already knew the place was beautiful from the pictures, but this was just the perfect place for a business team to spend a few days. It was spacious (yes we all had our own bedroom) and beautifully decorated.

The big surprise was the beautiful private roof top which offered us a 360˚ view on the whole city. Another nice surprise was a bottle of cold green wine waiting for us in the fridge. What else to ask more? Jose gave me all the possible details I needed to know about the area: where was the closest supermarket, the local bakery and where we could all have an authentic Portuguese dinner. I already felt at home… When he left, I noticed the guest book where all the past guests had left their impressions of that amazing place. The nicest review I found was:

“With all our love to the city. Lisbon is now in our heart. Thank you for the amazing welcome and the beautiful apartment”

When the rest of the team arrived “at home”, I have to admit that I was already feeling so comfortable that I had already started drinking some of that refreshing sparkling wine . We just had time for a quick diner nearby, a drink and all went to bed.
The next day, when I woke up, I could finally discover what was the view from my bedroom… Well, the streets are extremely narrow in Lisbon, so please do not think of me as a voyeur but I could actually see some of our neighbours across the street having breakfast. I opened my window; they noticed me and instantly waved at me. How cool is that? After being awake for 5 minutes, I already made some friends with people from the local community! They started chatting to me: “Oi, como você” (“Hi! How are you?”), “De onde você é” (“Where are you from?”). I’m not the real Mediterranean type – you could easily guess I’m not from there.

Everyone got ready, had a coffee. We headed to Rato where the HouseTrip office is. It was only 15 minutes away and we walked through a couple of really nice streets.

Lisbon felt peaceful and welcoming.

The office is full of light and almost feels like a real home. There is a nice kitchen with a balcony where from midday, there is always a nice smell of barbecue floating around. There is also a big lounge with a couch.
After a long meeting, Vanessa took us out for lunch to their busy local restaurant. It’s literally 30 seconds away. The owner grills the freshly picked up fish from the market in front of you and serves it as it is with boiled vegetables and salad. I was surprised by the crowd of people surrounding us. Rato is mostly a business area but this place was filled with people from all sorts of age and background: old couples, students, business people, and families with their children, all mixed up together. We were all under the charm of Lisbon.

At the end of the day, we all went for a drink in the Estrella park. It was great to finally all be together to get to know eachother better. With people from Beijing, to Stockholm, from Lausanne to Sao Polo and from Paris to Madrid, we just all click and share the same passion for authentic travel.

Next time, we’ll return you the favour and will take you around some undiscovered London spots.

Eventually, we all ended up in the old Barrio Alto area for a crazy night out. But this will not be disclosed. (now). So, just watch out for our next blog post to get a taste of the Lisbon night life.

Have a great day

Since then we’ve hit many milestones and have grown much faster than we had ever hoped, becoming Europe’s largest holiday apartments booking website in less than a year! Today we hit two other major milestones:

• We have launched the new HouseTrip website. The whole team has been putting a lot of effort into the redesign, we truly hope you like it. The picture on the homepage was of course taken in a real HouseTrip apartment: the Hoxton Loft in London.
• We’ve announced the investment of $2.7Mio in HouseTrip by Index Ventures, one of the world’s most renowned Internet investors (invested in such successes as Skype, Betfair, MySQL & Last.fm). We couldn’t be more thrilled to have Index Ventures onboard and their investment truly gives us the means for our ambition.

To add onto the excitement, we’ve also learned that HouseTrip was selected as one of the 9 “travel & transport” companies in the Telegraph’s Start-Up 100 selection that gathers Europe’s top 100 startups.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the HouseTrip team for their awesome job during the last few months and to also thank dearly all our guests and hosts without whom HouseTrip would still be at the idea stage. I cannot be grateful enough to them for the fantastic traction HouseTrip has seen since the beginning.

So, what are we going to do with all that money? Fairly simple: keep get closer to our vision of proposing holiday apartments everywhere around the world as an alternative to hotels. We think that more and more people realise it makes more sense to book a whole apartment for the price of a hotel room; on HouseTrip we want to ultimately offer them the opportunity to do so all over the world, as easily and safely as it is to book a hotel room. Concretely this means having more and more apartments listed (click here to list an apartment for free) and keep making it easier and safer to book them.

In a nutshell, watch this space, as a lot of new exciting travel opportunities will keep appearing!

How to turn your apartment into a goldmine

After almost 6 months working at HouseTrip, I thought I had seen all possible scenarios when it came to hosts. But as I discovered what I’m going to tell you, I realised how HouseTrip could still surprise me!

In early March we were working on identifying the best hosts for the month of February to be able to promote them on the website.  To do this, we looked at the positive reply rate and the number of bookings for the past month. We came out with a list of 15 to 20 hosts, most of whom were familiar to me; but in the list there was a name I couldn’t remember having seen before, and yet this host was among the best performers of the month of February.

To get a bit more information about this host, I decided to have a look at his profile.  When I did, I saw something that really surprised me; he had only signed up on the 20^th February 2011 – only 3 weeks previously. Seeing this I couldn’t stop thinking “How can someone we never heard of make it to our top performers in only 3 weeks?”.

Looking further into the details, I started to find an explanation to this success story. The host had signed-up by himself and listed one apartment on our website on the 20^th February. He then added another one on the 28^th and a third one on the 7^th March. All of them are small, well decorated and ideally situated studios in the heart of Paris. That already explained part of the success, Paris being one of our most active markets.

But that alone couldn’t explain it all. I then looked further at the description, and I saw the prices for his apartments were very competitive. Actually, his studios ranged among the cheapest accommodation we provide in Paris. It’s not underpriced, just value for money, and it means his studios would always show on top of the search results when people sort them by price.

Finally, he managed to get 4- and 5-star reviews from his guests very quickly, ensuring the potential guests about the quality of his apartments.

So that explains how he gets a lot of requests, but how to turn these into bookings? That’s when the host plays his part. Indeed our host has a positive reply rate of 99%, so as incredible as it might sound, 99% of the requests he gets are answered positively. The fact that he answers so regularly and positively ensures his calendars are always up-to-date, and that reduces the number of requests he would have to reject.

In terms of numbers, he received more than 380 requests for his 3 studios, in only one month, which turned into 67 confirmed bookings. He already welcomed 24 bookings and has still 43 to come.

His three studios have been occupied a total of 51 nights in March and will be occupied 66 nights in April, that’s an occupancy rate of 54.8% in March and 73.3% in April. One of his studios even reached 90% occupancy for the coming month. Only with HouseTrip bookings.

Since the 20^th February, this host has secured for more than 8’800 € of bookings, and he doesn’t seem to be reducing the effort. In only 4 weeks he made it to the “Top 20” hosts in the number of bookings since the launch of the website, and with only 3 apartments.

This is a nice example of how to make the most out of your apartments, and how to make sure you get a lot of requests and turn them into bookings, and we can only wish we get more of these to tell you about in the coming months! Now it’s your turn, if you were still wondering whether you should list your place or not, I hope this convinced you…

To recap, keys to success:

• Great apartment descriptions and nice photos
• Competitive prices
• Positive reviews from past guests
• Quick and positive replies to requests
• Updated availability calendars

Useful Links:

List your property for free

Paris Mistinguette Apartment

Paris Jeanette Apartment

Paris Mariette Apartment

He had written, ‘To reach the apartment from the airport, you can take a taxi or the bus called «aerobus». If you choose the bus, the ticket is bought inside the bus, at a cost of 3.50€, and you can use freely this ticket during 24h into Carris (bus and tram). Please check at http://snipurl.com/aerobus for more details. The bus stop is in front of Exit 2 of the airport (departs each 20 minutes). Step out at the bus station named «Rossio (City Center)» and you just have to walk 300m to the apartment (check the route at http://snipurl.com/map_correeiros).“

I recently joined HouseTrip as Chief Operating Officer and I thought that the best way to understand HouseTrip would be to take a HouseTrip.  After all, I heard it once said you learn best when you “be your own customer”.  As our customer service team are based in Lisbon, what better way to understand how HouseTrip works than to book on the site and go out to meet the (multilingual and multinational) Lisbon team.

So far, things were working out very well indeed.  I found the bus stop easily, waited just 10 minutes for the bus, paid my 3.50€ and headed into town.  On the journey in I reflected how different this was compared to other trips I’d taken in the past.  I was travelling on business as I had many times in the last few years, but that’s the thing, this time I felt like I was traveller not a commuter.  I had a friendly local host who had sent me great instructions; I was on a bus with everyone else, not cocooned behind a taxi window.  As Lisbon revealed itself to me I checked my bus map for my stop and looked forward to getting into my apartment.

On approaching Rossio, one of Lisbon’s main squares I was struck at the beauty of the city; long wide boulevards, 18th century buildings, a castle overlooking the town, pavements with mosaic patterns, fountains, clean air and a casual relaxed feel to the town.  I easily found the street where my apartment was located – a pedestrianised street with restaurants and cafes just one minute from the Rossio Square.  I texted Olivier and he buzzed the doors to the old building and I headed upstairs.

It was a long way up.  The apartment was built in the days before lifts and was on the fifth floor.  Built at the end of 18th century, the building is a listed property by the Portuguese Institute for Managing the Architectural and Archaeological Heritage, classified as Property of Public Interest.  Slightly out of breath I reached the top and Olivier showed me around.

When I booked via the HouseTrip website I was looking for somewhere small, centrally located and with two beds as I had a colleague arriving that night.   I used the map on the search results to narrow my choice and made a note of the apartments that matched my requirements.  I then made four different availability requests from the link provided and waited to see what would happen.

I must state that it was not known to the guests that I was a HouseTrip team member.  They didn’t treat me any differently to anyone else and Olivier only found out my role after I had booked.

After the first two hours I had received two replies saying that they didn’t have any availability for the two nights that I wanted.  Later that day though, Olivier sent me an offer.  This was an email from HouseTrip’s system with a link where I could click to book online.  It was €165 for two nights.  For two of us, for two nights, I thought that was a good deal for bang in the middle of the city, so I went ahead.

It was easy to book and pay on the HouseTrip system and very soon afterwards, Olivier had sent me the confirmation with lots of useful instructions and information about Lisbon (he sends this to all of his guests).

Olivier has two apartments that he rents out.  He has a day job, but does holiday rentals as a hobby and enjoys meeting and welcoming guests.  He showed me around the apartment and we talked a little about his hobby and he gave me some tips on how he attracts and then looks after his guests.

It was a lovely apartment.  Simply furnished, it was cosy and perfect for what we needed.  The lounge had a sofa, dining table and TV and then over towards the back of the room was a double bed.  A separate bedroom had another double bed and then there was a shower room and kitchen.

That evening my colleague and I stepped out into town.  We wandered down Rue Augusta, Lisbon’s equivalent to the Champs Elysee.  (Well, almost – it is pedestrianised – but it does have a big arch at one end!).  I grabbed a bite to eat and then we strolled around town to the waterfront 5 minutes away and back up into town, finishing up with a few drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe.

We slept well.  In the morning, I opened the shutters, made a coffee and drank it gazing down the quiet Rua dos Correeiros as it woke up and got ready for the day.

Then, down the stairs and we were in the heart of the city.  My first HouseTrip had begun.

This was my first time in Lisbon and I couldn’t believe how much I had experienced in less than 24 hours.  It felt real, authentic.  I was a traveller, welcomed by a local, staying in an original building – with my own space and privacy.  I didn’t have to check out at a lobby, get an elevator, open doors with a swipe card or sleep in an air conditioned box.

Now I’m looking forward to my next HouseTrip, wherever that may be.

Useful links:

- Search for apartments in Lisbon

- See the property I stayed in:

Olivier’s historical apartment rental in Lisbon’s tourist downtown: Rossio

March 2011

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

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

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

Arnaud