Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
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Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#2I think this is a brilliant idea. One of the most frustrating things for me when I travel is that my requirements are different from what the traditional Hotel industry caters to. All I need are a desk, chair and low latency / reasonable bandwidth internet. I tend to stay at the Marriott because they have their act better together then all the other chains, especially in SF. But that still means I pay up to $200 a night for the room ( with internet + car ) and pay for a lot of stuff that I absolutely don't need.
I'd much rather meet some nice people and stay in a cozy place with a single pillow and good internet.
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#3I'm such a novelty whore: I bashed my email address in the form on nothing more than the headline here. Sounds like a fantastic idea, though.
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#4It took me a while to parse the title: consider "People who need nothing except the internet in order to work" vs "People who only need the internet in order to work" vs "People who need nothing except that the internet should work". I assume the second is intended.
Also, how is this different to a hotel? I guess it's cheaper. So how is this different to a really cheap hostel with shared rooms? I suppose you can only let trustworthy people in.
So yes, I can see it working if they (you?) can get the economics right. Keeping the apartments clean could also be a major challenge.
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#5How is this significantly different from CouchSurfing.com?
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#6How is this significantly different from CouchSurfing.com?
If the Zipcar analogy holds, then the company will own the apartments and there will be no permanent residents.
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#7Sounds like an airbnb for workspaces :)
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#8For some reason this sounds like a network of hostels with some kind of membership?
Maybe? Just the first image I had from the site description.
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#9For some reason this sounds like a network of hostels with some kind of membership? Maybe? Just the first image I had from the site description.
No, it would be apartments and houses with a 3-5 person capacity each.
Re: Nomadic: Zipcar for apartments, for people who only need the Internet to work.
#10It took me a while to parse the title: consider "People who need nothing except the internet in order to work" vs "People who only need the internet in order to work" vs "People who need nothing except that the internet should work". I assume the second is intended. Also, how is this different to a hotel? I guess it's cheaper. So how is this different to a really cheap hostel with shared rooms? I suppose you can only…
how is this different to a hotel?
When you buy time at a hotel, you're buying a bundle of services. You're getting a room, with a door that locks. You're getting regular cleaning service, even if you don't need/want it. You're getting a private bathroom. You're getting privacy from the locals even if you don't need/want it. You're getting geographically limited because you can only get a hotel room in a place where the economics support building a hotel that has at least a few dozen rooms. I mean, hotels that have only one or two rooms aren't very profitable. Which means that hotels tend to concentrate in central business districts and other places where land is expensive.
The point is, all these features that are bundled together have real costs. If you don't need those features, then you ideally you shouldn't have to pay for them.
This is sort of like asking why Zipcar is different from a rental car company. There are efficiency gains to be had in a system where individual cars are scattered all over a city and where customers rent them by the hour as opposed to forcing customers to rent cars by the day from a centralized airport location.