ONE JOB SHOULD BE ENOUGH. This was the slogan of the strike of San Francisco Marriott workers in late 2018.
I happened to be in San Francisco and saw the strikes. When I asked for the reasons behind the strike. One of the reasons people shared with me was the fact that Marriott was offering people who were going to stay 2+ nights to skip housekeeping service in exchange for Marriott rewards points.
House-keeping staff reacted saying: ‘When I clean a room after 2 days it’s a lot more work.’
I actually walked away thinking to myself: “has it become so difficult for hotels that in order to save staff costs, they resorted to a step like this one?”
I looked at occupancy rates in major cities and found out that on any given day the occupancy rate is on average at 80–84%.
This means there is 20% of the available rooms that goes unoccupied.
Potentially value 30–40+ billion dollars, let alone the impact to jobs, adjacent industries and city taxes revenues.
I reflected on my experience using Airbnb and how many times I had to take Uber to go from the Airbnb location to a business meeting location.
Several times I thought: you know what after I add up the Airbnb cost to the cost of the Uber rides, I could probably figure a way to stay closer to my meetings downtown.
When I did this of course, I ended up with a no so good quality ‘hotel’.
So the question on my mind was, how can I stay at a decent downtown hotel at an affordable price. There was no easy answer.
That’s when several pieces added up and I ended up envisioning Diamo: a service that can make it easy for ‘perfect strangers’ to split the cost of a hotel room.
People have been sharing the cost of a hotel room for ages. There were friends, relatives, business associates, acquaintances but ‘perfect strangers’ no way.
So how do we do it?
I envision a jack-in-the-box sharing economy profile that goes with you wherever you go: from one sharing economy platform to another.
We call this your shared economy profile account: or your 3R TrustScore.
This mainly means your reviews (Airbnb + Uber + others) go with you and you can let’s say have an account on diamo.us, connect your shared economy account with its review history and be ready to book a room for 250 dollars and then look for someone, a perfect stranger, to share the room and the cost with you.
The reviews, as we have seen happen on Airbnb and Uber, create a sense of trust, security and reliability among total strangers and in the same way, it will happen on Diamo.
But rather than starting a profile from scratch and build reviews 1 by 1, we build a process where we will collect your sharing economy reviews and create a composite profile that will allow you to start using new platforms (such as Diamo) right away.
Because with the 3R TrustScore Profile, you’re no longer an unproven rookie.
Your sharing economy reviews will help you to transact with a sense of trust and security for you and for others.
In addition if you’d like you can go check out the Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram accounts for added validation.
You can inbox the person you’re going to share the room with, agree on everything and you’re good to go.
Through a startup support program with Santa Clara University School of Law, we created the rules of engagement for Diamo users so we can end up creating a win/win multiplier effect: room guests, hotel property and Diamo as a service provider.
In phase 1: we are focusing on a limit of 2 people per room, same gender, double-room set up.
One person does the original reservation and then puts the reservation up for a split on diamo.
When we are past cancellations windows from either party, the split is confirmed and everyone is happy.
We will protect the sharing economy composite profile on the blockchain to protect it from any tampering.
One of the side benefits here is for any future sharing economy platform, you and I won’t have to scan a driver’s license again and again, we will just tell them to access and use what we refer to as the 3R TrustScore Profile.
We are expected to launch the room split feature on https://www.diamo.us in early 2020.
Now the site features generic reservation capability for flights, hotels, rental cards, and cruises.
When we roll out Diamo split cost feature, the person who books the original reservation will be referred to as the ‘host’ and the person who comes looking for a cost split room on the Diamo cost split marketplace is called a ‘guest’.
To minimize the number of rooms that go unused, hotel properties will also be able to use Diamo to offer part of their room inventory for Diamo customers. In this case, both parties in a split will be the guests of the hotel!
To the hotel property they are both: guests of course. We will focus on the economy traveller who is plain vanilla, goes into a city, spends 1 or 2 days as a tourist or for business travel, uneventful with a high 3R TrustScore profile: the 3R’s refer to Reliability, Respect and Referenceability that is demonstrated as we transact on shared economy sites all around the world:
Reliability: They follow up on inbox messages and notifications, if they cancel they are proactively communicating to the other party so the other party can make other arrangements.
Respect: they are decent people; respect other people’s space and privacy
Referenceability: this shows up in the positive online reviews they continue to receive and elevates their overall score.
Other benefits I see for this are even more rewarding: sustaining hotel jobs, sustaining downtown economies, increasing sales and tax revenues for our beautiful cities and just imagine the favorable economic impact this can have overall.
We intend to donate a portion of our revenues to help with two social problems today starting with: homelessness and mental health.
With your help, I’d like to share this story with more people and have them join our efforts at Diamo.
Please let me know what questions you may have.
I would also appreciate it if you could share this with others who may be interested in in writing about or sharing the news with their contacts.
I look forward to our conversation and your thoughts.
Ash
Diamo Founder
9167537432
@ashseddeek
@DiamoAmerica (Twitter and Instagram)
Action Steps:
Travelers:
Diamo helps you split a hotel room with a perfect stranger. Diamo is the frequent traveler’s top choice: more options, more savings all the time!
Visit diamo.us, add your email address to be notified when the cost split feature is added to our services.
Hotel Managers:
If you’re a hotel manager, please also add yourself to our network so you can receive access to our our yield management dashboard and have more rooms occupied in your property and increase occupancy and revenues.
Press:
Ash
Diamo Founder
ash@diamo.us
9167537432
