This has been redesigned in order to emphasise the strengths of HouseTrip.com as a platform. First, our top destinations have been listed across the top of the page, to make it easier for guests to see the cities in which we have a good range of properties. These are the cities where we currently have the most holiday apartments. They will be constantly updated to reflect our current strongest offering. Second, we have identified some of the benefits of HouseTrip as a safe and easy platform for guests to rent holiday apartments and houses on a short-term basis. These are featured in the rotating slides displaying on the left of the page. We have also included a cool animated video for guests, and some of the industry testimonials that we have gathered recently at the bottom of the page. The design makes it more obvious at first glance what the HouseTrip platform represents.

Search results

Check out this search result for holiday apartments in London. The search results have been redesigned to display the information required in a search results page in a much clearer way. There are now more results displayed per page, with more space for each listing and a bigger thumbnail photo. The first lines of the description are translated. We have included a customer service sidebar with our office hours, which means we are now receiving many more phone calls from hosts and guests (we’ve received a lot of very useful feedback, which is great!). We’ve also included credit card symbols and a security padlock, to show that guests can make secure, encrypted payments for their bookings on HouseTrip.

Property Profile Page

Look at one of our holiday apartments in Paris. This has been redesigned to display the information about the holiday apartment in a much clearer and more visually pleasing way. The “Description”, “Summary” and “Top Amenities” sub-sections at the top of the page offer a taste of the property and offer easy navigation to the different sections of the page. The photos are bigger and it is easier to see the different photos. Sections are more clearly separated and we now offer optional translations of all text areas, thanks to Google Translate.

Booking Process

Guests can see the calendar of this Berlin holiday apartment’s availability on the “Calendar” tab. Then, if they wish, they can attempt to book directly. But we currently recommend that it is best to check availability with the owner first, on the “Booking Enquiry” tab. Here, guests enter the dates of their stay, which creates a predefined message to the owner, which guests can edit if they wish. Guests can send as many availability requests as they wish, which makes it a quick way to check the availability of multiple properties.

Once guests have an availability confirmed by an owner, they can book safely through the website, entering their credit card details during the process. Once the owner accepts the booking within 36 hours (normally, having already confirmed availability, the host accepts the booking extremely quickly), the guest’s card is charged. The money is held securely in escrow by an independent third party, which protects the guest’s money in case anything goes wrong.

N.B. New Messaging System Update!

Great news – we’ve improved our proprietary messaging system again. The message from guests to owners now includes number of guests and price as well as dates. Hosts then have six options:

• confirm that the dates are available for that properrty and that the price is correct for that number of guests
• propose a new price for the proposed stay
• propose different dates for the stay, if the property is available for similar dates but not the exact ones
• propose a different property, which is available for the proposed stay
• confirm that they cannot accommodate the guest for the proposed stay
• write a free text message

All of these options are customisable with a personalised message. The guest can book the offer directly and pay through the website. Since we launched this system a few days ago, we have seen that it is very popular with hosts and guests, since it offers the flexibility of a classified listing website but with the safe payment solution that attracts so many users to HouseTrip.

First of all, I apologise for not having written for a while: we were really busy over the last few weeks, working relentlessly on improving the website.

You will certainly notice the changes! Most of the website has been modified: the design has been completely redone, some features were removed, some features were added, the rental process was modified, etc.

Why did we make so many changes? Because, after the launch of HouseTrip.com back in September, it took a couple of months to realise what really constitutes the core of HouseTrip:

1. Guests want to find the perfect holiday apartment and book it as easily as possible
2. Owners want to get many bookings for their rental with a system as simple as possible to manage these bookings

These sentences might sound like “no-brainers” but believe me it is not that easy to understand what constitutes the core of your venture when you are a startup. Luckily, we believe we’ve got it right now.

The changes on the website are really aimed around these two core concepts, and over the next few weeks/months we will keep improving with that in mind. If you have any suggestions for us, please email them: we are always eager to get your feedback.

Just to give you a simple example of how, as a guest, finding a holiday apartment is now really easy: say you want to book a holiday apartment in Paris. You now simply have to go to the Paris search results, find rentals you are interested in, ask the relevant owners to confirm availability: as soon as one does so, you proceed to booking directly with your credit card. Quite easy!

Dear reader, I’ll try to write another post as soon as possible on this blog and until then I wish you happy holiday apartment renting!

Cheers,

Arnaud

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.

The development of the website is nearly finished thanks to the great work done by our developers and designers in Germany. We are currently testing all the features of the website – trying to come up with the most extreme user cases – and defining all the wording (you may have noticed that the words used on the above screenshot are rather approximate). You might remember that HouseTrip will be launched in three languages (English, French and German) so there is quite some work to do in terms of wording! Now more than ever I realize how good it is to have mother-tongue speakers in all those languages on the team (I do the French wording of the website).

When the wording will be defined and when we will have fixed all the little bugs we could identify, we will invite our friends, families and investors to check the website. Internally we call that our “private alpha” release. This should normally happen within the next two weeks. Once that is done, and depending on how many issues were identified in the process (hopefully none), we will then start listing properties on the website and then release to… you, our dear users! For this beta launch, we aim for the 1st of September. Remember, listing a property on HouseTrip will be 100% free so register your email address on this blog – many have done so already – in order to be contacted as soon as we start listing properties.

Dear readers and future users, my best regards and I will be in touch soon for another update,
Arnaud