What is iStopOver All About?

When we started this business, our focus was on doing something new. We wanted to solve “problems”, both in what people care about, and how they were doing things. We wanted to be relevant. And we wanted to do something that would make a difference.

We also want to create a real viable business that works well with the Brightspark model.

iStopOver was born from a number of different global realities:

- The economy was starting to falter in the fall of 2008 and the real estate crunch in the US was starting. We knew that people needed to find new ways to make extra money and we knew that people were looking to save money.

- People still want (and need) to travel, and were looking for new alternatives. At the bottom end of the market, couchsurfing is flourishing. Aimed at a mostly young and very budget minded travelers, couchsurfing lets people stay over on a couch at each other’s homes while traveling. Its not something that most people would consider, but is a phenomenon that should not be ignored. At the other end of the market, the vacation condo rental market is also growing. Dominated by companies such as Homeaway, they are a great way to rent out vacation property when not being used by their owners.

We identified a large gap in between the two – a market for people to rent out excess capacity in their homes. After speaking to many homeowners with available space, working closely with new and established bed and breakfast owners and domain experts in travel, we learned that there are many potential “hosts” considering renting out excess space in their homes as an alternative to hotels.

Most people who are already in the business of renting out excess rooms in their homes use listing sites such as Craigslist. When we spoke to these hosts, we found that most are really unhappy with these listing services. And when they try and launch there own website, they are overwhelmed with having to focus on traffic, search engine optimization (SEO), technology, credit cards.

So, we decided to create iStopOver as a focal point of all these phenomena. With our extensive experience of Internet businesses and using new Internet marketing tools such as social media, we quickly realized that this business is ideal for the current Internet marketplace.

The focus on iStopOver is to become a focal point for travelers, looking for an alternative to hotels, to meet homeowners looking to rent out excess space in their homes. We have spent our time learning what travelers (we call them guests) are looking for, and what homeowners (we call them hosts) are looking for. iStopOver is the result – we are the facilitator of the process.

iStopOver is also currently focusing on bringing soccer fans from around the world to World Cup 2010 by providing them with World Cup Accommodation via connecting them to South African locals.

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