Moira Johnston: A year or so ago, I was at a friend’s baby shower hosted at her mother’s house in Somerset West. I had a birthday coming up and was thinking how the house, which had beautiful lawns, a swimming pool and fire pit, would be the perfect venue if only I could hire it. That’s how the idea for renting out homes for parties, baby showers, weddings and even photo shoots was born.
I thought, if you can make money renting out your home for accommodation on Airbnb (and renters can save money by avoiding expensive hotels and B&Bs), why not do the same for events? When I started doing some research, I found that the concept had already been successfully launched in both the US and the UK. I got my sister on board and the idea then grew from making homes available to making any location available for any event – all in one place.
Nicky Rosin: From my perspective, I was working in a big corporate audit firm, working long hours and not getting that work-life balance that I needed, having a small child and a husband at home. So when Moira came to me with this idea at the end of 2014, I was very interested. I did a little of my own research and found that there were no really great sites in South Africa that did what we were aiming to do, and seeing the potential I jumped on board.
Johnston: Absolutely any space can be listed – we have everything from art galleries to restaurants, dance studios, hotels, castles, treehouses, bare land and, obviously, private homes and villas - which was the original unique selling point. By creating a marketplace for venues of any kind, we’re allowing people to generate revenue from their already existing, but perhaps underutilised, spaces.
Johnston: Anyone who’s ever tried to organise an event knows how difficult it can be to find the perfect venue. Fragmented directories exist for specialised events, like weddings and conferences, but there isn’t a single marketplace for a wide range of events. Then on top of that, the directories that do exist can sometimes be difficult to navigate or tedious to search since they don’t have filters that can narrow your search to your exact requirements. And then you have to repeat the details of your event to every venue you contact for a quote.
We’re trying to make finding and booking the perfect venue as quick and simple as possible. We list venues that can accommodate everything from a cocktail party to a dog show. Our various search filters help you to quickly find venues that meet your exact requirements. The easy-to-use personal dashboard allows users to save event details and request multiple quotes without having to re-enter them.
You can also save multiple events’ details – which is great for event planners or corporates who are often planning more than one thing at a time. An on-site messaging system allows easy communication with venues and we’ll soon be introducing online bookings and payments so that the entire process is managed in one place.
Johnston: By far the biggest challenge has been development of the platform – finding talented developers who have the time to be involved in a project like this is extremely difficult and we’ve had to change developers several times. We feel pretty confident that we’ve ironed out all those kinks for now and are happy to announce that we’ll soon be launching version 2.0 of the site, with some pretty cool new features, so keep your eyes peeled!
Johnston: The first time a venue was booked through the system and we realised it worked!
Rosin: I would say my top five fave venues that we have listed so far are:
OysterBox - It's just beautiful, and I love lighthouses
Tinswalo
Cavali
Dornier - a nice family place
Le Bonheur Croc farm - great for kids!
