COVER STORY
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all it social travel, short-term letting, peer-to-peer holidaying or just the new, new thing, sites like Airbnb (www.airbnb.com) and Roomorama (www. roomorama.com) appear to have reached something of a tipping point; worldwide bookings through the former alone are set to exceed those at Hilton Hotels (some 600,000) this year. Renting a property instead of a hotel room when you travel abroad is nothing new; but these sites, which connect hosts with spare rooms, empty apartments, tents and even castles to guests looking for something a little different on their next trip, have revolutionized the market. Gone are the cumbersome classified ads, the exorbitant agency fees and the need to book a year in advance. Gone, too, is the hype surrounding their scuzzy progenitors, Craigslist and Couchsurfing—both we and the Web have grown up in the last few years. Now you really can do this kind of thing not only on a whim and on a budget but in real style.
From Door to Door
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hese sites, though, have themselves already been around a couple of years; so what’s new, and what difference does that make here in Singapore? Well, for one thing, there’s now a vast inventory in Asia, especially on the two sites already namechecked, meaning you can find awesome options almost anywhere you want to go. For another, many of them have big plans for the local market and, in several cases, know it pretty well already. Both industry poster boy Airbnb and the previously Euro-focused 9flats (whose VP, Wei Leen Ng, is an NUS alumni) say they’re opening offices in Singapore before year-end, to better service those of us on this side of the world. Roomorama founders Federico Folcia and Jia En Teo (also a Singaporean) are one step ahead of them, having relocated their headquarters from NYC last year to focus on operations here. Despite widely voiced concerns that Asians might not be quite so comfortable in throwing open their doors to strangers, they’re all confident this is only the beginning. The space is evolving, too. Indeed, the notion that this is all about sketchy spare rooms has gone out the (grubby-paned) window. Roomorama, in particular, focuses on premium properties, including villas and even serviced apartments; 90% of their inventory is private and not all of it comes cheap (Teo tells us they recently had a single booking to the value of US$17,000). Airbnb, meanwhile, curate their vast collection so that instead of looking at a bunk bed, you can look at villas near vineyards, or only apartments featuring original design works by the Eames brothers (seriously—they have 53 of those). Sure, you can still find some less-than-stellar studios, but this is all a far cry from what sites like this were first known for. Indeed, those that haven’t seen fit to filter or finesse, including unabashed Airbnb clone Wimdu (www.wimdu.com), look horribly out of step.
Top of Google’s ‘related searches’ for “couchsurfing ”: “couchsurfing bad experience.” Then “couchsurfing horror stories.” That’s one reason why the next gen sites have placed such a premium on identity verification.
Why now? Wei Leen Ng, VP of 9flats: It seems mostly that this is an idea whose time has come. Vacation rentals existed before the Internet and the confluence of several factors, including a soft economy, the proliferation of online vacation booking, the maturity of the Couchsurfing concept, mature online payment options and Google Maps, all combined to make this inevitable.
FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2012 I-S MAGAZINE 7