Today I’d like to talk to you about a new company that was born last year.
When you book a hotel room, you only have one choice: reserve the room for entire days at a time.
But the consumer may also be looking for getting privacy in the city to nap or shower or prepare for something, or just want to change a diaper or nurse their baby.
For the people concerned in all such situations there is Recharge.
Recharge is a new startup that’s trying to change all of that, in fact this app allows anyone near a partnering hotel to get some privacy for extremely short hotel stays.
Users can book a stay in hotel for just for 67 cents a minute, or $40 an hour.
How Recharge works
To book a room, you have to open Recharge and you can find a map view where you can see which partnering hotels are near your current location.
Once you click “Book Now,” you’re given 15 minutes to arrive at the hotel Recharge has matched you with and check in. You don’t have to indicate how long you plan to stay. After 15 minutes, your booking time begins, and you’re charged $0.66 for every minute you remain at the hotel. When you’re ready to leave, just press the “Check Out” button on Recharge’s app, and your payment will stop.
“People most commonly use Recharge as they use Starbucks,” co-founder Emmanuel Bamfo told Fortune, referring to people’s use of coffee shops as place to sit down, catch up on some work and use Wi-Fi when available. The idea is similar to short-term office rental services like Breather, which lets customers rent out private space, mostly in offices, for anywhere between 30 minutes to a full day to rest up or do some work. The difference is that here you have an hotel room, available 24 H.
In my opinion this is really useful idea, and the success of the company is confirmed by Michael Baier, General Manager. As is reported in the offcial site of the company he said: “That demand took us by surprise. I wasn’t expecting the results to be frankly as good as they have been. There’s a significant part of the day where the rooms are empty. Most business travelers leave early in the morning, and a lot of them don’t come until late at night, so that time in between is really where Recharge became an interesting thing to consider.”
https://recharge.co/index.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/recharge-app-for-short-hotel-room-rentals-2016-6?IR=T
https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/24/recharge-lets-you-book-a-hotel-room-for-minutes-at-a-time/
http://fortune.com/2016/06/03/recharge-hotel-app/
Hi, I really like that idea presented by Recharge. Many times, when I wanted to keep my staying in room longer just for airport transport waiting etc I had to pay half of the price or standard daily price. I think it can be great option, especially in big cities, like ex. London.
I think it can be a good service for busines people or persons who don’t stay so long in a city but have to wait because of transport.
But I’m a bit worried about people who could rent a room just for a party or things that could not be good for the reputation of the hotel.