“Stayful is a travel app that finds hotels in a number of cities across North America based on exactly what you’re looking for, then gets you the best price possible,” George Tinari reports for TUAW. “Browse photos of the hotels, view a list of amenities and reasons why you might like your stay there, then quickly make a reservation right within the app. Customize your price range, type of hotel or stay, location and time frame all in a few taps to focus in on what you’re looking for. Stayful is free for iPhone and requires iOS 8.0 or later.”
“Good design means looking and functioning beautifully,” Tinari reports. “Fortunately, Stayful achieves both. The app design is among some of the better ones I’ve seen since the launch of iOS 8.”
“What’s more important than some subtle animations is how the app works, and Stayful so nonchalantly throws away all the unnecessary complexities that often come with booking hotels. The app asks you a simple question: “What are your travel plans?” Then you fill in the blanks,” Tinari reports. “From start to finish, finding the perfect hotel with Stayful is an easy, elegant process that makes you want to abandon any other travel service.”
Read more in the full article here.
I could not get the app to choose a checkin date other than the one it chose. And picking dates is both bothersome and oblique. Needs fixing.
I checked out the website, but I would imagine the app is similar.
The cities are limited, and it appears to be offering only “boutique” hotels.
It is kind of like Priceline, except the tell you the lowest online price and a suggested bid.
i haven’t seen it so I have nothing to add at this time.
Thank you Squiggles. Please keep us updated.
Yes, squiggles, please let us know. If you never do check it out, please let us know that too.
BTW , is there anything else you haven’t seen ? Do let us all know.
I’ll stick with Airbnb.
Airbnb, as a concept, was quite useful; it allows people to rent a room in their apartment, or the whole apartment, to someone else while they are away. The problem with this is, the regulatory requirements to run a hotel business are quite significant, and there are specific taxes that are charged for hotel rooms. None of this is complied with when you rent your apartment to someone over Airbnb. Not to mention any liability for incidents when someone is in your apartment (hotels have the appropriate coverage for that).
I can’t see Airbnb surviving for much longer under current, totally unregulated conditions. If it does, then it would make no sense for hotels to have to pay all sorts of taxes, government and regulatory fees, when independent hospitality business that use Airbnb don’t.
You may be right. I see Airbnb sliding sideways, from individuals getting a little extra cash by connecting with individual travelers wanting a unique or inexpensive place to stay into a space dominated by people setting up businesses for the express purpose of exploiting the Airbnb model. Renting specific apartments for no other purpose than to re-rent them through Airbnb. No longer the “sharing economy”, just another business model that happens to skirt the laws for that type of business.
A similar thing appears to have happened with RelayRides, IMHO, moving from making your vehicle available to rent for a few hours while you were at work or otherwise not needing the car, to used car dealers setting aside some of their inventory for the specific purpose of generating rental revenue under the auspices of RelayRides, but specializing in daily or longer rentals. The few hour rental concept has been dropped from RelayRides approach. What individual has cars they can rent out for days or weeks at a time? Not exactly the sharing economy, more like a rental car agency with distributed inventory ownership.
In order for the “sharing economy” to work, both sides of a transaction need to be bringing individual contributions to the table. Once you have a little fleet of cars under one owner answering all of the Uber calla in an area, you have a taxi company. Sorry, Internet, sorry internet, where nobody knows when there is a dog on the other side of the screen.