The short term property rental scene is not a new one, and one that has changed very little since it first appeared online in the late 90's. Guests browse for somewhere to stay, find somewhere, pay and then stay. This has been the same process for every other website you've probably used today.
But have you ever found a property you liked, the price seemed reasonable, only then for the added cleaning and service fees to make the home unaffordable?
We have, and we think its ruining travel. So we set out to make something where whatever you can afford, should be what you pay.
That's because you set the price for what you want to pay. Have a strict £100 per night budget? Make an offer and if the host accepts, that's what you'll be paying. The host has 72 hours to respond, where they'll either accept, counter it or decline.
As a host, you may wonder why you would accept any less than you're going rate, "that's what it is on the other sites, why would I take less with BidNbed?". Well because you will earn more.
With typical rental platforms, there is an illusion that host fees are low, this is because they take a huge proportion of the booking amount from the guest. This is money that the guest would happily have going to you, their lovely host, instead. Sometimes up to 20% of what the guest pays gets taken from you. So whilst your 3-5% hosts fee may seem low, you're actually missing out on a lot of what your properties really worth.
As we do not charge the guest extra fees, more goes to you, and we only take 10% from the final amount, giving you the remaining 90%. Rather than the typical ~75% you would normally be getting from your booking.
You'll probably be familar with those annoying gaps in your property's calendar. Those few days here and there that don't get taken, leaving you with no earnings. Maybe it was because it was raining, or there was a global pandemic, or there's a festival 100 miles away so no one wants to visit your town.
On those days, wouldn't it be nice if you got something, to keep your home lived in? That's why letting guests make offers on your properties brings more chances to keep those diaries booked up and your income flowing.
Gerome Braddock, Co-founder
Merton Lansley, Co-founder
The idea for BidNbed came about in 2019 after Gerome had been speaking to his parents, who host rental properties themselves. They were complaining that not only were they having lots of their homes go unoccupied, they were also getting flooded with emails and messages from guests asking if they would take a different price for a holiday.
It was a very manual, and time consuming process. No platform allows you this flexibility in pricing and negotiation, forcing them to navigate around the secure platforms to do private external payments and agreements, it made it clear that this idea needed to become a real thing.
Gerome & Merton both studied Computer Science (BSc) together at the University of Brighton, as well as going on to study at the University of Sussex to gain an MSc in Artificial Intelligence. During this time, they built and developed BidNbed from scratch, using the tech skills gained through their jobs as Software Engineers, and business skills learned from startup programmes.