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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

No Diamonds For These Lodgings

Travelers tired of the self-indulgent and sanitized luxury of top-end hotels now have an alternative. Hovels. OK, so perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Hovelstay.com. is a Glendale-based site that promotes itself as the “anti-luxury marketplace” and offers rooms, attics and backyards around the world for travelers on a budget who want to get off the beaten path. As in try a jumbo hammock for two in Nicaragua for only $18, or a rooftop camping spot in Israel for $30. That’s a bit extreme? Then try the jungle cottage in Hawaii for $95. “People spend so much money on a plane ticket,” said Michael Womack, 33, a co-founder of the company. “Now there is an opportunity to find something very unique and save a lot of money.” Think of it as Airbnb, the popular home-sharing site, for the un-moneyed set – though some think there is real money in the concept. The startup recently attracted a $1.2 million investment from a Dubai-based investor. Womack and his former co-worker Michael Bolger, along with the website’s developer Patrick Cunningham, launched HovelStay.com LLC in June after working for several years at an L.A.-area luxury vacation marketing company. A year ago, Womack and Bolger decided to create their own website where they would post a hovel and let customers decided if they wanted to rent it. To their surprise, the demand for hovels was overwhelming. “I wanted to be funny and 100 percent honest,” said Womack, who recalled how the three men found their first hovel through a friend who got them an L.A. tree house for $19 per night. The site currently lists nearly 250 “properties,” all less than $100 per night and categorized into “clean and comfortable,” “good enough” or “survivor hovels.” Hovelstay charges a 1 percent fee for the host to list on the site and from the guest, and handles all bookings and payments. (It plans to raise the fee to 3 percent after Feb. 1) Until recently, only students could access the site, but after receiving inquiries from older customers, it opened the service to everyone. The majority of customers learn of the site by word of mouth or social media, and the company hasn’t employed traditional advertising yet. However, one challenge is locating and screening potential hovels. After all, not everyone envisions a rooftop as a potential revenue stream. So the startup recently opened a hunter program that allows travel bloggers to earn a finder’s fee when they locate a new destination. “The anti-luxury marketplace is something we want to establish,” Womack said. – Olga Grigoryants

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