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Adventure Homestay — Find cultural immersion homestays in developing countries
Our platform connects travelers with vetted family homestays in developing countries, facilitating unique cultural experiences while generating revenue for local communities.
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@zhiqi_shi Airbnb operates in a different niche, and the model that works well in markets like the US and Europe isn't as suited to conditions in developing countries. For example, it's difficult for ordinary people in many developing countries to open bank accounts that can receive Airbnb payouts, and since there often isn't an efficient payment transfer system in these markets, they lose a large percentage of payouts to fees charged by various intermediaries before they receive the funds. For this reason, most of the Airbnb listings in developing countries aren't individual homes at all, but hotels and other mid-size businesses that can more easily tap into international payment systems.
I really get a sense of adventure when I look at the stays, and I like that @juliakurnia.
How do you manage to get in touch with the hosts (seems like a really tough challenge to me)?
@juliangoetze That is a tough challenge, but not insurmountable. To get in touch with hosts in our first focus market, Cuba, I traveled to the country and spent three weeks staying with a different family homestay each night, and invited the best ones to list on Adventure Homestay. From there, word of mouth spread until we had hundreds of listings (which we were able to vet via their reputations with existing platforms). There is an immense demand for opportunities to generate income in developing countries, and when one appears it takes very little marketing effort to attract participation.
Launching soon!
Good idea - but idk how you will find a lot of homestays - competiting with airbnb on this stage seems impossible
@sergey_glukhov One of the reasons I build this is that Airbnb has very few genuine homestays in developing countries - the vast majority of their listings in these locations are actually hotels, as payment and other barriers make it hard for ordinary people in developing countries to use Airbnb. We don't intend to compete with Airbnb in the US, Europe etc, where Airbnb's model is already a good fit for local conditions.
Launching soon!
This is a beautiful concept! I certainly can see much interests from hosts in the Global South. Whom do you expect to be your primary customer? Hikers? Students studying abroad?
Zidisha