‘Twihards’ can relive their favourite moments from Twilight with holidays inspired by the franchise.

Travel site Wimdu is offering a couple of getaways based on Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling books…

To the article…

By day, cabbie David Weekes battles the city’s brutal street traffic, now exacerbated by the much-maligned Olympic VIP lanes, which are off-limits to taxis. By night, Weekes plays B&B owner…

To the article…

… the woman who’s offering her garden shed for £40 a night

On a clear, still day, you’ll probably be able to hear the roar of the crowd at that other Olympic stadium down the road.

This one’s not quite so grand as the real thing, of course. There won’t be a spectacular opening ceremony, and it’s unlikely that Sir Paul McCartney will play here at the close of the Games.

But there’s a perfectly good podium on which to grandstand Britain’s medal-winning glory, and – best of all – it cost nothing like £486million to build.
The tiny shed in Tricia Jones’ garden is only a 20 minute trot from the Olympic Park – and at £40 per night it is a lot less expensive than staying in a hotel.

To the article…

They give you the chance to benefit from a local’s in-the-know tips and nab some great deals, such as a New York apartment for £65 a night.

Tara Evans finds out how social travel could save you money on a holiday and how you could turn a profit from renting out your own room. To the article…

Filled with more than 10,000 pieces of royal memorabilia – including a Diana-themed stained glass window – this semi in suburban Wembley, north London, has been opened to paying customers in honour of the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee. To the article…

The concept of using the web to network is no longer confined to business and friendship. Nowadays, social online activity encompasses travel too. To the article…

Becoming a part-time landlord and renting out space in your home to travelling visitors has become easier thanks to a new breed of website

Cash-strapped homeowners can potentially earn thousands of pounds a year by turning their spare room into a one-room hotel playing host to travellers from around the world.

Websites such as Airbnb.com and Wimdu.com allow “hosts” to advertise spare space on a nightly basis for travellers and guests. The space can be anything from a futon in the living room to a self-contained flat but most hosts typically rent out a spare bedroom.

Airbnb.com describes itself as a “community marketplace for unique spaces” and is positioned somewhere between hotels and couch-surfing. The site was set up by Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk in San Francisco in 2007. The trio let their loft apartment to delegates at a conference when all the hotels in the city were booked up. The visitors slept on air mattresses, hence the website name.

What began with three guys and a few airbeds now offers accommodation in more than 16,000 cities in 186 countries. To date more than two million nights’ accommodation has been booked via the site.

Rival Wimdu.com works in a similar way. It was set up in Germany in March 2011 and opened a UK office in May 2011. The site has got off to a flying start and in June secured £80m in funding from venture capitalists, the Samwer brothers. Wimdu now has 35,000 properties in more than 100 cities across the world. Its slogan “travel like a local” highlights the facts that guests will get to see different side to destinations than if they’d stayed in a hotel.

Both the sites enable guests and hosts to leave reviews and feedback about each other. Airbnb links with Facebook so that you can see where your friends – and their friends – have stayed.

So how much money can you make from renting out spare space this way? Inevitably that depends on what you’re offering and where. Londoners can get £50 a night or more for a double room while rates start at about £30 in Manchester.

As well as nightly rentals, you can rent out properties for weeks or longer too. This could be handy if you wanted to rent out your place while you were on holiday or needed a short-term tenant for any of a handful of reasons.

Listing a property on Airbnb is free and the site takes a 3 per cent cut of each accepted reservation as well as charging guests a booking fee of between 6 and 12 per cent. Guests pay the site and the payment is passed to the host 24 hours after the guest checks in. There’s also an option to take a deposit from the guest and any disagreements about its return are mediated by Airbnb.

Wimdu works in a similar way. Hosts are charged 3 per cent of each booking fee and travellers 12 per cent of the fee. So if you rented a room out for £100, the host would pay Wimdu £3 (and so receive £97) and the visitor £12 (paying a total of £112).

Interest in short-term lettings is likely to peak in the UK this summer when the Olympics come to London and millions of sports fans need somewhere to stay. With hotels hiking up prices, affordable accommodation across the capital will be in demand.

“Flats, homes, and rooms are already being booked. Many people started booking their accommodation on Airbnb in July 2011, more than 12 months before the games began,” says an Airbnb spokesman, “Right now we are seeing one-bedroom flats going for anywhere from £200 to £400 a night depending on their proximity to the Olympic venues. This represents a 100-200 per cent price premium for the Olympics.”

Inevitably renting out a room to someone you don’t know involves a leap of faith. Although you can read other people’s reviews of both properties and guests, there’s a huge trust element in letting a stranger into your home.

There’s already been one high-profile case in which a San Francisco apartment let through Airbnb was ransacked and burgled. Since then the site has introduced $50,000 insurance per letting covering losses due to theft and vandalism, and a 24-hour customer service hotline. Wimdu offers £43,000 of free insurance per booking.

Peter Harrison, an insurance spokesman at MoneySupermarket.com, says anyone contemplating using their spare room this way will have insurance issues to contend with.

“I would advise anyone thinking about letting tourists and travellers into their homes as temporary paying guests to check with their home insurer first to ensure that they would still be covered by their policy,” says Mr Harrison.

“Homeowners should be completely honest about the way they intend to use their homes and fully explain the situation to their buildings and contents insurer to avoid any issues should they be a need to make a claim through their home insurance during this period.

“You may find you also need additional insurance such as public liability insurance to cover anyone injuring themselves on or around your property.”

People who own their homes with the help of a mortgage – the majority – should tell their lender what they are doing and check that it is permissable under the terms of the the home loan. As for tax, the Government offers the rent a room scheme, which allows homeowners to rent a room in their own home – although it has to be furnished – for up to £4,250 a year before income tax is payable.

As well as being a way to make some extra cash, Airbnb and Wimdu can save travellers money too. Rooms are generally cheaper than hotels and you get the added benefit of interaction with locals in your destination.

Boris Gustaffson, 36, a management consultant living in London, used Airbnb when he ran the Stockholm marathon last year. He says: “I had left hotel booking too late, all the hotels were nearly £200 per night and so I found an apartment on Airbnb for £65. The landlord was trying to sell the apartment – otherwise I think it can feel a bit strange staying in a stranger’s home.

“It was really good though as I got to stay in an area without tourists, and use local shops and restaurants.”

Case Study

Kyriaki Gerontaki, 46, Oval, south London

Ms Gerontaki, 46, has made £2,500 since she started renting out her spare bedroom in Oval in September last year.

She advertises on Wimdu.com, charges £60 a night and provides breakfast for her guests as well as giving them the run of her flat.

Ms Gerontaki says: “I have a spare room and decided to have guests to stay. I’m a ceramic artist but not earning any money at the moment so income from the room is all I have to pay the mortgage and my bills.

“I haven’t had any bad experiences so far. All the guests have been nice and grateful to get a good deal. I like to meet and engage with people. But, they tend to be out a lot of the time as they have come to visit London.”

“It’s like having guests, the only difference is they pay,” she says, “I much prefer it to having a full-time lodger and the money’s better.”

More than a quarter of Londoners are planning to leave the city during the Olympics next    year with one in 20 expecting to rent out rooms or homes to cash in on the Games.

With less than a year to go, people living in the capital are already taking bookings for London 2012 as room rates soar by more than 2,000 per cent for the two-week period next July.

While five per cent have plans to rent their property, almost 10 per cent said they would like to but were worried about security and cost, according to a YouGov survey.

The poll, commissioned by accommodation website Wimdu, questioned more than 1,000 Londoners.

It found a third were leaving the city because they did not want to face congestion when travelling, while two in five said they were worried about security.

But many also have plans to profit from the first home Games since 1948.

Sadia Rahman, who owns two five-bedroom properties in Stratford, east London, has already received a booking from Germany for one of her rooms during the Olympics.

Miss Rahman, 26, said she had been able to increase her prices from £22 to up to £500 per night – an increase of more than 2,100 per cent.

“Every day we’re getting a lot of enquiries about it – about four or five a day,” she said.

“Around 99 per cent are from out of the UK, coming from Germany, Italy, mostly Europe, asking how far it is from the Olympic park. During the Olympic period we’re charging a lot. We’re in a prime location for the Olympics.

“I think it is a very big opportunity. Honestly speaking, I didn’t expect that I would get that much. I think all the Londoners are very excited about it.

“We are expecting to fill all of the rooms because of the response we’re getting. I think a lot of landlords in east London are interested in doing this.”

According to Wimdu, the number of Londoners renting out properties will mean an extra 400,000 rooms available for the influx of visitors next year.

With average rent for the whole of the Olympics at £4,200 for a double room, people in London stand to make a total of £1.6 billion.

While one in three said they planned to stay in the capital during the Games to “soak up the atmosphere”, three per cent of those leaving the city said they would be renting out their home.

More than a quarter said they thought it would be a good time to go on holiday.

A spokesperson from London & Partners, the official promotional organisation for the capital, said: “July and August are popular times for Londoners to take annual leave and we are aware that some Londoners may decide to move their holiday from other times of the year to take place over the Olympic period instead.

“We know that many Londoners want to remain in the capital to enjoy the Olympic celebrations, free sporting events and cultural activities taking place throughout the summer.”

Michael Riegel, CEO of Wimdu UK said: “As a city we still haven’t felt the rush of hosting the Olympics. It won’t be until we enter 2012 that things will really pick up and Londoners will start getting in the Olympic mood.

“However hosting the Olympics will not be without its challenges for London. Millions of guests will be visiting from all over the world and we will face the problem of a severe shortage of accommodation, but this challenge also represents a great money-making opportunity for Londoners.

“People with spare rooms or those who will be leaving the city to avoid the chaos of Olympic congestion can let out their rooms to tourists and earn a small fortune during the games.”

December 13th 2011

….I was here in response to an ad posted on room rental site Wimdu. The ad offered open-minded travellers a chance to rediscover “the true meaning of Christmas” by spending a night in a farmyard stable. Not just any stable, either, “a little Bethlehem, nestled in the South Downs close to Brighton”, complete with donkeys, a manger and a bed of soft, fresh straw, all mine for a meagre £12, every penny of which would go to charity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/dec/12/christmas-manger-tom-meltzer?INTCMP=SRCH