You can rent cars by the hour. You can rent boats by the hour. You can rent many things by the hour except for hotels, or that was the case before Recharge started up last year. Recharge is providing flexible options for guests and travelers at luxury hotels. Currently they are operating in San Francisco and New York City with expansion plans on the horizon. Eventually they want this service to be available at thousands of hotels in hundreds of cities around the world. Through the Recharge service you can check into a hotel for any number of hours, take a shower, take a nap, watch some television, order some food, et some work done, change into some new clothes, kill some time until your next meeting or all of the above. Even if hotels are near a 100% occupancy rate (which is rare) there's still a very good chance that 25% of those rooms will be empty for most of the day due to late check-ins. Recharge has 11 employees, is based in San Fran and has raised just under $5 million from investors. 

In this interview I spoke with Manny, co-founder of Recharge about this new concept in the hospitality space, why nobody has done this before, what have been the biggest challenges, how hard is it to get hotels on board, what has been their marketing strategy to get consumers signed up, what lessons have they learned, when will they begin to expand beyond SF and NYC, what feedback have they heard from their hotel partners and customers, what was their fundraising strategy, what are their long term goals and much more. 

 

--------

Thanks for listening to the Startup Sense Podcast.

All of our interviews and episodes are also available at StartupSense.net

You can find me at JonahLupton.com or email me at [email protected]  

Startup Sense Podcast is sponsored by Jool Media. 

Jool helps entrepreneurs and founders build, launch and grow their companies by providing superior technology, marketing and consulting services. 

Jool helps clients of all sizes, budgets and industries. 

Jool puts clients in the best position to raise capital, hire employees, grow revenues and maximize profits.