Supplier News

9 September 2014

There's no doubt that private home, apartment or condo rentals are growing in volume and making waves in the hospitality and lodging industry. Now there's a new twist. RoomActually is an innovative new off-campus student housing platform that provides an AirBnB-like solution for universities to own and manage their communities of landlords. It promotes a safe, efficient and exciting way to find and pay for off-campus housing.

"Universities are growing more competitive and they need services to differentiate themselves and help students," says William Keck CEO and Co-Founder of RoomActually. "At the same time, student housing is scarce, difficult to find and hard to manage. Our new platform is completely free for universities, landlords and students. It is intuitive, customized to the school brand. The technology provides renters with real-time availability, search options, lease signing and a secure way to make deposits or rent payments online and via mobile."

The company, based out of Manhattan, has already successfully launched its technology in Europe. One university with over 6500 students and five campuses worldwide, already has 3000 landlords with listings and over 3700 total rooms available. Another public-private institution with 40 buildings and 6500 apartments is using RoomActually to manage housing on campus that is owned and operated by foreign governments. The group processes over 50k applications a year and is leveraging RoomActually's enterprise application management system to review, accept and process those applications. With a robust suite of tools from reporting and CRM to custom workflows and system integrations, RoomActually can provide a complete turnkey solution for their clients. Implementation is quick and is hosted securely in the cloud.

RoomActually has great timing and fast-moving founders, but has benefited equally from a sea change over the last few years in consumer attitudes. In 2010, 8% of those surveyed in the PhoCusWright report rented out a room in their home, apartment or condo. In 2014, that percentage has grown to 14%.

"We have a very receptive market in both students and universities, adds Keck. "Millennials, as the driving economic force in the US, have been culturally programmed to borrow, rent and share. We expect to add at least ten new schools in the US, representing over 250k students, by December 2014. This is just the beginning, and we are thrilled about the response we've received."