- A short experiment among Airbnb hosts indicates that floor plan improves the listings’ accuracy. This helps to get more bookings and better reviews (blog, infographics)
- Hosts seem to misunderstand their competition: not between stays, but between the places of stays
- Photographs and floor plan tell different stories. The photographs describe the apartments’ state and interior, the floor plan describes the apartment itself in one picture only
- Targeting Airbnb hosts at first, offering a “closed beta” for the most innovative hosts. The app was open for everyone after public launch in late May.
April 21st, Oulu, Finland – CubiCasa™ is answering to one of the greatest needs of Airbnb® hosts and launches an online application for floor plans creation. The app offers an easy way of getting high-quality floor plans, that are already popular in ‘traditional’ real estate. But it has a low price, fast delivery, and great customer service.
Using a rule of thumb that hosts have three ways of improving their odds in getting bookings -(i) marketing materials, (ii) pricing, (iii) sales channels-. Floor plan sets into the first category. This is also how the initial idea of the app emerged: all listings offer the same information on how the apartment looks like, the accessories and equipment available. But unfortunately, they don’t give enough information about the apartment itself. The guest is definitely interested in what is available, but some important pieces of information are left untold. These include e.g. how the guest room, bathroom, and the kitchen are located inside the apartment. Also, the convenience, and privacy, and how they are related to other rooms in the apartment. A floor plan tells all of these in one picture, the idea is confirmed with a short experiment (blog, infographics).
About real estate
When dealing with the ‘traditional’ real estate, agents and brokers, buying and selling a home, it is clear that all homes are individual and different. There is no uniform concept for a ‘home’. Thus, the responsibility of agents and brokers is to show how potential homes differ from each other and give homebuyers credible offers and promises. Airbnb and other vacation rental hosts may have their competition of guests with hotels. But the marketing of individual apartments’ short-term rentals is incomparable to marketing hotels and professional accommodation.
“We all know what hotel rooms are like, pretty much everywhere in the world. We don’t know what individual apartments are like. They differ radically even in the same block, and much more between cities, suburbs, areas, and countries. It seems that many hosts think in terms of a stay because they find it intuitive to think hotels as their competitors. But, in Airbnb and vacation rental, the decision is not made between stays, the decisions are made between apartments where the stay happens. This is where the conceptual floor plan gets really important, having the place visible to guests”, says Harri Pesola, CubiCasa founder, and CEO.
The app is opened private in early May, public in TNW Conference Europe, 26-27th May
Prior to the public launch, CubiCasa was offering a “closed beta” opportunity for the most enthusiastic Airbnb hosts.
CubiCasa values courage in both product development and Airbnb hosts open for the new and giving them the benefits before the public launch. “The end of May and early June means the start of a holiday season and thus greater demand for vacation rentals. We want to give this extra value to those about to deliver the best for their guests”, states Jarmo Lumpus, CubiCasa founder and Head of Product Development.
The application will be published to a larger audience on the TNW Conference held in Amsterdam on May 26-27th, 2016. The conference is expected to bring together over 15 000 visitors including startup companies, investors and international media. “We are excited to launch the application and deliver real value. The whole concept of real estate is going through a massive transformation. And we see this as a great opportunity”, Lumpus adds. After the launch, the application will be open for everyone, including other vacation rental sites than Airbnb.
About CubiCasa
CubiCasa founders Harri Pesola and Jarmo Lumpus got to know each other while working in Nokia’s product development, in its days of global market leadership. After the change in the mobile phone market, they wanted to stay in software and do something radically different. In result, they ended up understanding the true power of floor plans. CubiCasa’s differentiation in the floor plan market is based around the “conceptual floor plan” idea. Generally, getting an exactly measured floor plan is too expensive and time-consuming to get for most purposes.
The conceptual floor plan can be a hand-drawn sketch that is converted automatically. Additionally, it should look commercially fit, keeping the process and delivery as fast and as simple as possible.
While redefining the idea and usage of digital floor plans and indoor spaces, CubiCasa is delivering scalable services globally. Currently, it serves customers in 31 countries while gaining 15% monthly growth, on real estate and other industries like interior design and home automation. The company operates in Oulu, Finland and Palo Alto, California.
Contact information
Harri Pesola, CEO, founder
+1 650 283 6012, harri@cubicasa.com
Jarmo Lumpus, Head of Product Development, founder
+358 40 7695658, jarmo@cubicasa.com
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