Sharing economy is catching up fast and many industry experts have suggested that it is the way forward for travel industry. People are choosing homestays over hotels, renting out their vehicles and turning into local guides and the trend is just starting to pick up. We learned about a new Kickstarter project called RoomsForever that plans to change vacation rentals for the frequent travellers.
The idea is to enable people to pool their money which can be used to purchase apartments at popular tourist cities all over the world.
Raffaele Lovine says, “We love traveling and we love using AirBnB, but it has its limits. You are still in another person’s home and are sharing that space with them. The same is true some of the others that enable people to trade flats or rooms. We wanted to tap into what works for timeshares, but make it more of a true ownership, as well as, expand it. You’re buying into more than one location when you use this service. That means for your money you can now go use a flat in London, Tokyo or wherever suits.”
The apartments will be equipped with digital locks that can be unlocked using the mobile phones of the travellers. The people who invest can use the apartment(s) for limited number of days of stay depending on the amount they invest. The Kickstarter listing is looking at a target of USD 280,000 which will be used to start off with four studio apartments across locations chosen through a poll.
While the concept is new, we aren’t very sure about the feasibility. The list of popular travel destinations isn’t short and building up a presence across wide geographies will take a very long time. This is like paying for AirBnB rentals you may or may not use for next 10 years for destinations that you may not even travel to. Not only that but it will require plenty of funds which means a large number of backers. This would translate to availability issues at popular tourist destinations, especially in peak tourist seasons which defeats the purpose. We think you are still better off renting an AirBnB on your next international trip. If you think otherwise, you can find more details on Kickstarter.
