Bright outlook for room rental services

Hostel Hunting founders (from left) Loke, Lim, Wen Khai and Low.

HOSTEL Hunting, a room rental platform focused on student accommodation, has been steadily expanding since it was established in January last year.

The homegrown startup began with 300 rooms and increased its offering to 71,000 sourced from 5,000 owners as of November.

The platform aims to be the easiest and safest way to book accommodation for students in every market that it operates in.

“We are now gaining traction because we have built a good reputation since our establishment in early 2015.

“We are now known as a trustworthy platform that facilitates transparent transactions between landlords and students.

“We focus on understanding landlords’ concerns and how we can help them mitigate and manage these, as well as get people to understand the accommodation problems faced by students.

“The result of our efforts is a platform that offers protection to both students and landlords. Students are assured of safe and secure places to stay and landlords are assured of a hassle-free rental experience.

“We are happy that our platform is able to offer real solutions to these ongoing problems in the market,” said Hostel Hunting chief executive officer Wen Khai.

The startup also safeguards the interests of students by standing by a 100% refund guarantee and refund policy should the said accommodation not match the original booking confirmation.

Hostel Hunting was founded by Wen Khai, Marcus Low, Loke Weng Leong and Joey Lim.

“We achieved many new milestones in 2016. We kicked off the year by setting up our sister platform in Singapore with 1,500 rooms.

“In Malaysia, we moved into a brand new office in February to accommodate our growing employee base.

“We went on to do 25 roadshows around Malaysia and have already signed collaboration agreements with 38 educational institutions. We are now in high-growth mode.

“Our unique visitors have increased by almost 800% in the past six months and are continuing to increase by 150% every month.

“The actual enquiries we receive have also increased by more then 5,000% over the past six months, and are still growing between 200% and 400% every month.

“We are very excited about the potential of our business as we make further plans for regional expansion into markets like Thailand,” Wen Khai added.

Hostel Hunting currently collaborates with Universiti Malaya, KDU University College, Monash University, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Inti International College Subang, International Medical University Malaysia and Olympia College of the Raffles Education Group as the recommended source of student accommodation for these institutions.

The platform is also a useful resource for working professionals looking for places to stay as Hostel Hunting welcomes all genuine tenants.