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Airbnb for Seniors
Examples of companies or websites that offer "Airbnb for seniors" include Silvernest Inc., The Freebird Club, Senior Homeshares, and Evergreen Club.
#1: Silvernest Inc.
- Website: Silvernest
- Silvernest Inc. was founded in 2015 by Chuck Mckenney and Wendi Burkhardt with the objective of helping older adults ages over 50 to find potential roommates for homesharing and companionship.
- The company is headquartered in Denver, CO.
- The company has more than 65,000 sign ups from members across all 50 states in the US.
- Silvernest charges homeowners a monthly subscription fee of $24.99 to list their homes while housemates are free to join but have the option of paying $29.99 which helps them to get pre-screened and vetted thus enabling them to become more appealing to homeowners.
- Silvernest Inc has raised total funding of $5.6 million from four rounds of funding.
- The last funding round was on August 3, 2018, where the company raised $3 million from Incenter in Series A funding round.
#2: The Freebird Club
- Website: The Freebird Club
- The Freebird Club is a "travel-based social network for older adults" that was founded in 2015 by Peter Mangan.
- It is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
- The network operates as a peer-to-peer homestay and social travel network that enables older adults aged over 50 to connect with other older adults for accommodation sharing as well as meeting new people for social and cultural interactions when traveling.
- The network charges new members a one-time payment fees of €25 as joining fee to become members and began interacting with other members.
- The Freebird Club provides members worldwide.
- On August 1, 2017, the company raised €50,000 from EASME — EU Executive Agency for SMEs in its initial round of seed capital.
#3: Senior Homeshares
- website: Senior Homeshares
- Seniors Homeshares is an online platform that was launched in 2015 as Shareagenarias, LLC by Stephanie Heacox with the primary objective of matching boomers who were seeking companionship and homesharing.
- The online platform provides online housemate services that specifically target older adults aged over 50 who are looking to list their homes as they seek to match other older adults seeking accommodation sharing.
- The platform does not charge any membership fees but relies on donations to help covers its expenses.
- Senior Homeshares provides homesharing services to older adults across the US.
- In 2015, the company launched and crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo where it managed to raise $1,795, which was only 3% of its flexible funding target of $50,000.
#4: Evergreen Club
- Website: Evergreen Club
- Evergreen Club was founded in 1982 and it is headquartered in Grandville, MI.
- The company provides a Bed & Breakfast network that targets traveling who are over 50-years-old.
- Every member on the network must be a potential host although no member is expected to provide accommodation sharing when it is not convenient for them.
- The company primarily operates in the US and Canada although membership is open to other hosts in the rest of the world.
- Members in North America are charged $75 per year, while members from the rest of the world are charged $80 for 5 years.
Research Strategy
We began our research by looking for businesses whose services are comparable to Airbnb with a specific focus on those that offer senior citizens exclusive offers. To do this, we looked through news journals and industry-specific market reports for competitors and key players in the hospitality industry within the segment covered by Airbnb. In doing this, we were about to identify examples of companies or websites offering "Airbnb for seniors." We visited the official website of each company to determine that it satisfied the criteria for providing homesharing services that target older adults who are 50-years-old and above. Additionally, after identifying these examples, we compiled information on what makes these hosts senior-friendly, how they are different from Airbnb, and general host information. However, in visiting their websites and searching through the other sources mentioned above, we were unable to determine which regional areas they cover or the number of guests, hosts, or trips completed using these platforms.
In order to find this information, we applied a second method. We visited the social media platforms of Silvernest Inc., The Freebird Club, Senior Homeshares, and Evergreen Club to see if they posted any data which could help us determine the missing information. Unfortunately, their social media platforms including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook do not have any relevant data published on this topic.
As a third method, we looked into industry-specific databases that publish statistics and other hard data about hosting platforms and technology within the hospitality industry. These websites include Bloomberg, Reuters, Crunchbase, and Hoovers. We also looked through government databases that record financial information on public companies. However, neither of these strategies proved useful because each of these companies is private. We assume this information is not available for competitive reasons and therefore each company protects it from the public domain.