Our guests love that a HouseTrip is an authentic trip, allowing them to live like the locals do. They can shop for produce at the markets and whip up a feast in their very own kitchen, or even put a load of washing on. Plus, our guests feel secure knowing that with HouseTrip, their money is safe every step of the way. They use their credit card to pay online using our secure system, just like they would a hotel room, and they never have to worry about phantom lettings, because we’re scam free. It’s a revolution!

This perspective also translates into a way of working. By joining the HouseTrip team, you are a HouseTripien and you can be part of this movement. You can help make your workplace authentic, one that you are proud of. At HouseTrip we don’t believe in following the crowd, we make our own path. We make our own success. You can too.

Here’s our latest opportunities…

Ruby on Rails Developer (London)

Online Performance Marketing Specialist – PPC (London)

Typo3 Front End Developer (London)

Sales Support Assistant – 3 month contract (London)

Leader of Finance Customer Service (Lisbon)

QA Tester (London)

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.

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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

Our team is growing and with it so is the number of stories to share. No two days are the same in our office.
For starters, one of our team members on his first day locked himself in the bathroom. It was an adventure to get him out of there. Luckily, he was not too scared and he is still here with us.

Throughout the day we take care of our guests and owners.
We help them find the perfect accommodation for their stay and we try to solve all problems.

A couple of stories:

A Swiss guest visiting Lisbon called us because he wanted to go to Madrid on the following day yet he had no credit card. The agency didn’t want to block those dates without having the confirmed payment before. Why not come to our office to make the payment directly and meet our staff as well? We will offer you a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. He had a great stay in Madrid.

Another guest left an apartment in London to catch his flight but the property manager didn’t show up in time to give him back the damage deposit. The guest left and took the key of the apartment. The property manager didn’t want to send the money before receiving the key nor the guest wanted to send the key without receiving the money first. Why not send the key to our London office and have the owner pick it up? He then paid us the damage deposit and we sent this amount back to the guest.

One guest booked an apartment for the 30th of April; however, she arrived in Paris on the 23rd of April. She called the owner and he was a bit confused with the dates but the apartment was available; so he let her in. After her departure, the owner called us saying he believed there was a problem in our system. We then called the guest and only then she realized she had booked the apartment for the wrong dates. She was very lucky since everything was fully booked for Easter!

We love win-win situations!

We would also like to add some of the best replies so far from guests telling us why they haven’t book with us:

- “Partner insisted on hotel instead – the fool”
- “Dear Vanessa, I am really sorry I didn’t book. The wife booked an hotel and I need to stay there if I want to stay married”
- “The reason I haven’t booked yet is because I was looking for an apartment that was smoker friendly (not just tobacco)…”
- “I am happy to book it through House Trip and the price on there; however it mentions a sizeable deposit. As only 1 of the 3 people is an alcohol drinker, there should be no danger of damage …”
- “I have noticed the one bedroom property was “shared room”. Would I have to share my bed with the owner?”

We have to go now; we will help a group of 60 people find apartments in Barcelona.
Thank you for reading us.
Have a great day.

Destination: Lisbon

David, our Chief Operating Officer would be joining me as we were to visit our colleagues there and I didn’t want to let him down by booking a one bed studio with no windows 2hrs away from the centre of town (that would just have been embarrassing). I had never been to Portugal, had no idea what was what or where was where in Lisbon and had never used HouseTrip; my mission was clear and the pressure was on!

I say that I had never used HouseTrip, which is true, but I had used a number of other holiday apartment websites in the past. I love travelling but don’t do hotels, finding them quite impersonal and cold. I also like to have access to a kitchen (it’s always an exciting experience to go to the local food market and shop for exotic produce then figure out what you’re going to cook up with it); I also like to be in an area surrounded by locals and feel the movements of the city, the vibe on the streets, the way people live out their day to day lives, it just gives you a deeper experience. My last holiday apartment experience was one I remembered well for al the wrong reasons, having made about 15 availability requests for flats in Dubrovnik I got turned down on every one before, a week later, being told that a different flat was available and that if I wanted it I just needed to send all my personal and credit card details to a complete stranger in Croatia. I’m not paranoid about online security but that was pushing it a little far even for me and I finally arranged to fax (fax??) the payment details over to them in the hope that it would work out. It did, and Dubrovnik was stunning, but the whole experience was not a pleasant one.

Anyway, I digress, back to Lisbon. As I started searching for apartments my fears of booking the wrong place were quickly laid to rest and I selected a centrally located two bedroom flat, paid online and immediately received a confirmation email with everything I needed to get there once in Lisbon. All I needed to do was print the map, note the phone number of the person who would be handing me the keys in order to call them upon landing and brush up on my Portuguese. So far, so simple.

We flew out on Tuesday afternoon and I called the owner immediately on arrival. They told me that they were waiting at the flat to give us the key and show us around. A short bus ride from the airport we hit central Lisbon and Rossio Square, with some great sights along the way, including amazing pieces of street art. When we arrived in Rossio square we were greeted by a typical Lisbon sight: the yellow trams.

We made our way up the steep steps towards the Castelo S. Jorge; an amazing sight perched on top of the hill. We got halfway to the castle, reaching the street where the flat was located, turned around and took in the sight, with a great view of Lisbon and out to the ocean.

We made it to the flat, were handed the keys and shown around a pretty little apartment with great views of the town. It had everything we needed and was a perfect place for anyone on a mission to explore all Lisbon has to offer.

We then made the most of the remaining daylight by strolling down towards the seafront and taking in this beautiful city, with its bright yellow buildings, beautifully ceramic tiled facades and vibrant street life. We followed this with a meal of seafood in a small local bar.

The rest of our stay was an opportunity for me to meet our great Lisbon team, who made us feel very welcome and took us to a local Nepalese restaurant (it’s not all seafood and Pastel de nata in Lisbon, oh no…) before we went to Bairro Alto where we experienced a stunning night time view of Lisbon (my picture does not do it justice I’m afraid) and went for a drink at one of the many small bars that line this lively and characterful neighbourhood’s narrow cobbled streets. You can feel the influence of Fado everywhere as you walk around and experience the area; the bars being full of sounds, posters and memorabilia paying credit to the country’s greatest Fado singers, especially Amalia, the queen of Lisbon Fado. You can read all about Lisbon Fado and the complex emotion it gives birth to, Saudade, here. Understanding Saudade(s) is probably understanding Lisbon a little better and this is a good short explanation of a complex spirit: “Lisbon and Fado have saudades. Saudades is the emotion of Fado. It brings the past into the present. Saudades is not easy to explain. Nostalgia, Longing, Melancholy, no English words capture it, but Fado music reveals the emotion.” It is quite fitting that a word that so beautifully defines Lisbon would be impossible to translate; you just have to go there to feel it.

By the time we were due to fly out on Thursday I felt as if I needed at least another week to really get to know the city, it’s little alleyways, hidden treasures, scattered local bars and restaurants, friendly inhabitants and engaging character. On the flight home I vowed to come back and discover more as soon as possible; Lisbon is a city that can not leave you cold, it has a true spirit of its own and I came back to London happy that I had experienced a great HouseTrip

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.

This Wednesday, this page in HouseTrip’s history has come to an end since the students presented their work to us and handed us out their final report. Their research of course confirmed the fantastic potential for HouseTrip and gave us some great ideas we will use to delight our future users! We are all quite excited about what is coming!

Below you can see a picture of the very international team who worked with us. From left to right: Shay Shaked from Israel, myself, Eva-Maria Hufnagel from Germany, Nadine Wirz from Switzerland, Ambika Seth from India, Martina Unternaehrer from Switzerland and Dominik, Junjun and Adrian from HouseTrip!

At the end of the project's final presentation

Apparently, in the course of the project, we even managed to convert Ambika to entrepreneurship: she wants to launch her own hospitality concept and she has the HouseTrip team best wishes and full support for that!

Thank you so much again for all your hard work and we hope to keep in touch. Please come back to this web address in the middle of the summer to see some of your recommendations being implemented on the website!

Back at home in Lausanne, I literally spent 6 months speaking about the HouseTrip idea to everyone I met. I wanted to check that it wasn’t something I was getting excited about on my own, that it was actually something people needed. It was a great feeling and it gave me confidence that everyone saw a lot of potential in the idea.

Junjun and Arnaud

On the way I had of course shared the idea with my girlfriend Junjun who, to my great delight, agreed that we should both dedicate ourselves fully to the project after we would finish our studies in January 2009 (we were both studying hospitality and tourism management at the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne).

Uli

Uli

The next step of the project came in 2008 summer in Austin, Texas. Both Junjun and I were there for HITEC, a hospitality technology event, to represent our school. We noticed the presence of Uli Pillau, who is sort of a legend in the hospitality technology world because he was at the beginning of two of the largest companies in the field, Fidelio Software GmbH and IDeaS. Luckily, we had our laptop with us and on it was HouseTrip’s first introductory ppt presentation. We therefore jumped on the occasion and went to Uli, asking him if he had 5 minutes. He answered he literally only had 5 minutes – I guess that is what they call an elevator pitch – and we therefore quickly opened our laptop, took a deep breath and started presenting HouseTrip the best we could. We ended up speaking during close to half an hour: we had convinced Uli! One of the nicest individuals I have ever met, Uli – a German citizen from Munich – stayed close to the project ever since!

Dominik

Dominik

Another important step in the life of HouseTrip was Dominik, who was to become the 3^rd member of the launching team. Dominik got immediatly convinced by the project: we were both taking entrepreneurship classes (our major) at university but we only remotely knew each other. One day, at the end of a class, we started speaking about what we would respectively do after school and I of course begun describing the HouseTrip project to him. I had not even finished my description of the project that he interrupted me: “It is brilliant, would love to join you!” And that was it: he really was in (I bet most of our readers don’t know and never worked with Swiss-Germans – Dominik is from Zurich – but once they give their word, you can count on it). Months after, we now work together everyday, 100% on the HouseTrip project!

Stephan

Stephan

At this point, we were three people on the team with a lot of knowledge about business, the tourism and travel industry but knew only little about developing a website.

In parallel, we were also looking for financing and in that context we went to Munich to meet with Keith Gruen, the founder of Micros-Fidelio who was introduced to us by Uli. Junjun and I had a very nice lunch with Keith in a hotel called “Anna hotel” and while we were describing him the challenges to find a good solution for the technical development of HouseTrip, he told us he knew someone called Stephan Wiesener who had started a company (Conject) and who had developed his own travel social network, Trekpilots.

We got in touch with Stephan with the intention to get leads on how to overcome the challenges we were having with the development. It was soon clear that Stephan had the right personnality, background and the right attraction for the HouseTrip idea: he has the perfect profile to be on the launching team, as HouseTrip’s CTO. Stephan has great experience and knowledge in development and the Internet: he did a PhD on semantics webs back in 1997, spoke at conferences next to Tim Berners-Lee and developed numerous websites and software. From little knowledge about website development, Stephan joining the team was a great leap forward!