Distribution Strategies

HouseTrip recently emerged as the winner of the The Get Funded Show@World Travel Market contest held in London.

Published: 24 Nov 2009

HouseTrip recently emerged as the winner of the The Get Funded Show@World Travel Market contest held in London.

HouseTrip was first selected as one of the four finalists of the event on the first day and eventually was chosen as the winner after its second pitch the day after.

The online venture, according to the company, is positioning itself as one-stop marketplace for short-term rentals including vacation rentals, city flats, guestrooms and B&B. The website is being developed around a single goal: to facilitate the rental process for both hosts and guests. The company has described Paris, Berlin and London as its entry markets.

Arnaud Bertrand, founder & CEO, housetrip.com, spoke about plans for future. Excerpts:

HouseTrip.com has emerged as the The Get Funded Show 2009 Winner. What do you think went in your favour?

Arnaud Bertrand: What Jason Katz (the Founding Partner of KP Capital) said when he announced the winner was that we were probably the startup with the best risk/reward ratio. I think that was the main reason. As well, during my pitches, I really tried to explain what we were doing in the simplest and most truthful way and I think that got through to the jury.

HouseTrip’s mission is to give people the power to travel in private accommodations all around the world. How did this idea originate and when did you decide to turn into a start-up or a business?

Arnaud Bertrand: I had the idea for HouseTrip when I was driving to Paris, coming back from London. The trigger is probably that during my stay in the UK I had tried to book a B&B in Scotland : the process for finding and renting a B&B was so complicated that I told myself there must be an easier way of doing it - I literally had to spend 2 weeks calling potential hosts before finally having one booked. As well, I had tried to rent out my place in Lausanne while I was away for holiday and, same thing, I found it difficult to get guests anywhere. It finally remained empty while I was away. So I somehow experienced the both sides of the spectrum : the hosts’ and the guests’. I guess those experiences triggered the idea.

Can you elaborate on your business model?

Arnaud Bertrand: The business model is very simple: we take a small 10% commission on the transactions that go through HouseTrip.

How is HouseTrip.com focusing on offering a differentiated offering for travelers? What according to you are major challenges in doing the same?

Arnaud Bertrand: The offering we have is fairly complete for the main destinations we cover: from affordable studios at €35 a night to much larger properties with more than 10 bedrooms in prime locations. The main way we differentiate ourselves is with the level of protection we offer to travellers: when booking through HouseTrip, travellers are automatically protected by our guarantees and cancellation policies, for free, something not seen before in the holiday rentals industry.

As well, on HouseTrip, any property is directly bookable and travellers pay securely on the website: with this system we differentiate ourselves quite a lot from classified ads website, which still account for more than 90% of the holiday rentals industry.

Can you elaborate on your inventory or search options? Is it only restricted to Europe as of now?

Arnaud Bertrand: Right now our entry markets are Paris, Berlin and London, so most of our inventory is located in these three places - although we are starting to have quite a few properties in cities like Miami, New York or Rome.

There are sections like Profile and Wall for users. Can you elaborate on what sort of social networking and trip planning options has HouseTrip.com worked upon?

Arnaud Bertrand: We have Facebook connect on HouseTrip because we want our users (especially the hosts because guests do not need to fill out a profile when booking a property) to be able to join HouseTrip without having to fill out another profile. Right now that is pretty much the only effort that we have done in terms of social networks. We are however looking at other synergies we could implement with existing social networks, including trip planning ones, and you should see a couple of development coming up in the next few months regarding that.

Where do you see your business headed in the next year or so?

Arnaud Bertrand: What we want right now is to generate the most possible bookings for our existing hosts; that is our main goal and we are looking at all the possible ways of doing that. When we have really mastered this process at our small scale, in our entry markets, then we can replicate to additional destinations. Our goal is to have enough properties in most of Europe’s popular destinations by the end of next year.