Ask HN: Review my startup, Localo.com

[betolive]

Hi everyone,

We just announced our marketplace and we would love HN readers to give us feedback about overall look & feel, our form to submit itineraries and our affiliate program.

With Localo, travellers can book rooms, houses, sofabeds, boats, domes, and even complete islands from locals willing to share them.

Travellers tell what they want from their stay, and then locals compete for them by submitting personalized offers.

We expect Localo to provide the best matchmaking mechanism for travelers looking to experience a city like a local, so we will appreciate any suggestions related.

Links: http://localo.com http://localo.com/submit http://localo.com/referral_program

[adunsmoor]

I really liked the site, in general. I could see using this when traveling with my family to find places to stay once there are more listings available.

Some thoughts as I browsed the site:

* Everything was slow. The "About" page was the worst but the listings themselves took 5-10 seconds to load. Later, I waited 30 seconds for the search page to pop up. (I was searching for a town that had no listings from the front page.)

* The search form cleared the location when I navigated "back" to it from a listing. It'd be good to allow for searching, click a listing, back, click another listing, ...

* If I'm looking at renting a house are there restrictions on the times/dates? If so, I didn't see that indicated on any of the listings. Do I get the whole house or am I sharing it with the owners?

* I found the wording for some things a little strange:

  "This place does not welcome pets :(" Seems negative for some reason. How about, "No pets, please."?

  "We don't have security mechanisms as 24-hour security, fire alarms, safe deposits, etc."  I wasn't sure how to parse that the first time I read it. I'd suggest keeping it simple - "Not available"?

  "Invite to Submit Offer" Gives the impression of a lot of steps. "Request a quote" seems more familiar.
 

* The lack of prices on most of the listings was surprising. What does "Upscale" translate to? If I have to interact with the owner I don't want to waste my time or theirs. Perhaps a price range would help.

[betolive]

We have implemented caching mechanisms to speed up the load time. Thanks for the wording suggestions, we will look into them.

About the restrictions on times/dates, usually hosts provide their arrival/departure policy so if you haven't seen the information it maybe because it was not provided yet.

Our marketplace allows hosts to provide opaque personalized rates, so sometimes the hosts prefer not to make their rates public and provide the offers by request. I love your price range suggestion to clarify what is Upscale, we will try to add it soon.

[JonLim]

Very nifty app - took a look at accommodations for Chicago, where I will be going in two weeks, and was disappointed to have found only one entry. Along with it, there was no price information.

However, your very clean presentation on location, time from touristy attractions, and amenities included is fantastic.

What are you guys using for outbound email? I'd love to talk shop.

Good luck!

[jcr]

Your business seems remarkably similar to AirBnB. The only problem I noticed was on your 'about' page. It loads hundreds of thumbnail images (pictures of the "locals"), so it takes far too long to load.

[betolive]

Thanks for the suggestion jcr, we want to showcase our community, but it may have the same effect with just a subset of localos.

You are correct about the similarities with AirBnB, we think that personalized offers provide a better matchmaking mechanism for travellers looking to experience a city like a local.

[mindball]

I like the idea. I was confused when I searched Toronto and the top result had a price but the rest didn't.

My question is how scalable is this? Is the idea to eventually integrate hotel listings?

[betolive]

Localos can publish their rates or only provide personalized offers for travellers, which are usually opaque. So in Toronto's case, only one localo has decided to publish their prices. We do not plan to integrate hotel listings since our current focus are the long tail accommodations. Any local is able to list his/her place in our marketplace, so we think there is enough room to grow.

[mindball]

I think you should be looking at the large picture here. Yes the local market makes sense to start but the idea is to scale the business up to take a % of a billion dollar industry not a cottage industry with say $100 mill total market.

[antidaily]

http://localo.com

[vipivip]

Great idea, pages loading up slowly though.

[JonLim]

Seconding this. The initial load was mighty slow, but everything else after that was pretty snappy.

[betolive]

Thanks for noticing it. We are checking how can we speed up the initial load.