HouseTrip.com Blog – The official blog for holiday apartments

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 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

Some call it the «vacation rental», «self-catering» or the «hometel» industry but at HouseTrip we like to call it the “short-term rental industry” because we find it to be the most gathering expression.

Indeed, in our view, the industry can include a lot of different lodging scenarios of which a few examples follow:

Home owners with a self-catering cottage next to their main residence

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This post follows a previous one which you can read there.

VentureKick

January 2009, a huge milestone for HouseTrip: VentureKick, the most prestigious entrepreneurship contest in Switzerland in the domain of technologies. The competition works in 3 stages: 4 projects win the first stage (and it gives them the right to participate to the second stage), 2 projects will pass the second stage and only 1 will ultimately receive the third stage’s prize, CHF100′000. We had applied to VentureKick back in November 2008 and learned in December that our project was one of the 8 selected (out of approximately 30) to present in front of the jury for the first stage.

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Welcome to the HouseTrip blog!

We thought it would be interesting to launch the blog with a series of posts about our short history: “where it all began” starts at the very beginning, the birth of the HouseTrip idea!

I remember exactly when and why I got the idea for HouseTrip: Junjun and I were driving from London to Lausanne (Switzerland), the car completely packed with all the stuff we had accumulated during the 7-month internship in the City of London and I was thinking about those two events, which – I didn’t know – would change my life.

Finding a Bed and Breakfast (B&B) in Scotland

The first event I was thinking about was when I tried to find a nice B&B for a weekend in Scotland: it doesn’t seem like much of a life-changing event but bear with us

Eilean Donan Castle - Beautiful Scotland!

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