Roamr, an innovative corporate travel accommodation platform, aims to dramatically reduce costs for businesses by promoting employee-to-employee hosting, sidestepping the increasingly expensive hotel industry. The platform can facilitate savings of up to 30% on lodging expenses for companies, a benefit to both the hosted employee and the host, who receive a portion of the money not allocated to traditional hotel expenses.
Based on a global scope, Roamr is especially attractive to businesses that operate with distributed teams. The leadership at Roamr, founded by Stephen Dooley and Jason O’Gorman in 2023, suggests that the platform will enhance collaboration and team cohesion by giving colleagues the opportunity to cohabitate.
Dooley notes the need for such a platform, as steep hotel prices, growing roughly 10% each year, are a significant burden on corporate travel budgets. Furthermore, with the modern shift in working culture, as around 97% of tech firms offering location flexibility to draw and retain staff, Roamr responds to the cost barriers encountered when leveraging these policies. The platform offers employees the option to swap homes with workmates for free, facilitating remote work or ‘workcations’ to take full advantage of location flexibility policies.
While Roamr may not suit all firms or business travellers, its founders are confident that it will resonate with fiscally prudent start-ups and tech businesses typically employing mostly millennials and Generation Z workers, who are well-versed with the shared economy concept.
Dooley recognises the efforts of companies like Uber and Airbnb for sensitizing consumers to sharing resources. Reserving accommodation on Roamr is akin to other online services, with the condition that information is only shared within internal colleagues. An easy-to-use digital interface displays property images and amenities list, enabling straightforward bookings with a click.
Dooley, whose key interest lies in leveraging the collective potential of shared economies, dedicated four years toward a PhD centred on financial technology, delving into the formation of trust, a pivotal aspect in the quick embrace of the shared model. O’Gorman, a software engineer, has over the past ten years, lent his hand to budding travel and hospitality ventures like RentalMatics and Cloudbeds.
“With our experience spanning fintech, travel, and the implementation of shared economy platforms, we have personally experienced the constraints of exorbitant accommodation costs when working remotely,” states Dooley. To illustrate, a tech firm requiring a Dublin-based worker to spend a month in San Francisco would face an expense of roughly $10,000. With Roamr, a San Francisco-based co-worker can provide accommodation and earn $3,000. The sojourning employee will gain $3,000 in rewards for picking Roamr over a hotel and the company will economise $4,000. It’s a triple advantage.
Initiated at the tail end of the previous year, Roamr has an established customer base. The company’s prime source of revenue is commissions earned from bookings on the platform. They also offer the scheme as an employee benefit; a SaaS fee is charged for personal house swaps.
Thanks to O’Gorman’s prowess, Roamr’s establishment costs were modest, approximately €10,000, a figure already recouped. The firm is currently part of the New Frontiers scheme at TU Dublin and is close to securing a pre-seed funding round of about €500,000 from a selective group of angel investors who bring not only funding but also precious industry expertise to the fledgling set-up.