Summer Innovations: Vacation Time Sharing

This is one in a series of posts on how our summers have evolved.

Summer = vacations for many of us. And increasingly we are bypassing hotel chains, rental car agencies, even air with new services. Here are some:

Airbnb

“An ingenious service, AirBnB allows you to rent out any part of your house for any portion of time to anyone you like. Free to list, AirBnB lets you rent out anything from a single room to your whole home. You won’t pay anything unless someone books your rental.

The uniqueness of this site comes from its community style reviews: under each listing, guests leave formal reviews. But hosts too get to review the guests, so as an owner, you can select only guests who have successfully stayed elsewhere.  This adds security and peace of mind on both ends. Additionally, AirBnB offers a $1,000,000 host guarantee as insurance. Now, add that to free professional photography and no wonder AirBnB is taking off, all over the world.”

SF Chronicle

RelayRides

San Francisco--based start-up RelayRides, which launched in two cities in 2010, went nationwide in March and now claims 20,000 members, is betting that neighborly car sharing can take hold across the U.S. Backed by $13 million in venture capital from the likes of Google and General Motors, the start-up will promote its service through GM's OnStar communications system starting this summer. It works like this: Car owners rent their vehicles for $5 to $20 an hour using a membership-based service that coordinates payment and logistics online. The business, started by Harvard Business School grad Shelby Clark, collects 15% of the hourly fee, with 20% going toward insurance. Car owners pocket the remaining 65%.

Time

AnyBots

Suzanne Brocato who works from home as the receptionist from 60 miles away for AnyBots which shows the future of telepresence coming to our homes and neighborhoods. That could change the nature of future vacations not having to endure flights, TSA, lost bags etc. (BTW - she is wife of the web designer for my book sites, Tim Brocato)

Comments

[pocket listing in montgomery]

Wow, really its a very nice post...thanks for sharing this post...its a very informaive.

[Noack Baum]

Summer time has been unstoppably amazed the many esp. the kids, teachers, travelers, adventurers and the like. This feature is perfect - making our summers more fun and exciting!