Where are you right now? The office? Who’s at home right now? The dog? No one? If someone was willing to pay you to use your home during the day — as an office, to hang out with some friends, to crash while they waited for their hotel room’s check-in time — you could get paid without having to give up your bed for the night.
Airbnb isn’t expanding into this arena (yet) but Vrumi is already doing daytime rentals in London. It allows those in search of a place, whether it’s a one-time thing or weekly occurrence, to find people with homes and apartments in the vicinity who are willing to let a stranger pay them for the privilege. And what if you have a tricked out home gym or gourmet kitchen? Instead of a gym membership, someone could pay to use your free weights and not have to worry about wearing flip-flops in the shower. And your deluxe range would get more use, whether someone just wants a place to go for a homemade (hey, it’s still a home, even if it’s not their home) lunch or decides to hold an informal cooking class.
That all sounds great, but what if someone trashes your treadmill or makes off with your cast-iron skillet? “We have a really stringent verification process, we check IDs, we hope to do background checks, and we also have the review customer feedback process,” Vrumi’s head of content Asim Haneef tells The Next Web. You also have the option of sticking around while someone else uses your desk or piano or what have you.
The host is free to set any price they wish, though using a place for the whole day starts at about $28 (£18). The service is limited to London now, but it would probably make a big splash if it ever makes its way across the pond.
