Another genius business idea: Luxury staycations at home

February 18, 2014 by Joshua
in Entrepreneurship

I haven’t posted something for my Genius Business Idea series in a while. I thought of this when I also did a homework assignment I assigned my students in the class I’m teaching at NYU.

The unmet need

Many people are choosing to take vacations from work without leaving their home towns, which they’re calling “staycations.” They cost less money and take less planning while still giving people a chance to relax. I read they picked up in popularity during the last recession.

The problems are that they don’t give you the chance to check out completely from some everyday parts of life you want to take a break from and luxury hotels still cost a lot of money. I’m not sure if the staycation trend includes where you still stay at your home, which saves yet more money, but doesn’t give you the luxury and pampering you can get at a luxury location.

The service

How about a service to provide short-term luxury services for people at home at fraction of travel costs? The idea is you call this company and they will make your home feel like a luxury hotel. They’ll send people to do everything: one-stop turnkey service providing chef-prepared meals, cleaning services, massages, child-care, concierge, non-emergency correspondence, chauffeur, etc to your home. They’ll take you to places around your city you’ve never been to—things like historical tours or things only tourists do but residents would enjoy, taking care of all the hassle.

For less than you’d pay for transportation and with little need to prepare, it lets you check out of your stress without leaving home. You can sleep in your bed while getting away from it all.

Because you’re comparing your costs to a vacation involving travel, you have a lot of leeway on pricing. And the more complicated air travel continues to get, the more you save on hassle, having to get visas, not dealing with customs opening your bags. It’s safer, with negligible risk of terrorism.

For most cities, you can still consolidate your kitchen, laundry facilities, and most other services so you don’t have to use people’s appliances. You’d need insurance and to have your staff bonded, but the risk isn’t that different from maid service.

Want to do it?

If you like the idea, feel free to run with it. You wouldn’t need that much capital to start it. Mostly marketing, I’d think, then it’s mostly salaries.

I haven’t searched to see if people are doing it already.

About entrepreneurship

I want to reinforce that the main point of this series is to show how ideas are easy to create. I don’t claim to have much experience in this field, so people with experience could improve it. I hope they do, and run with it. If you do, please let me know because I’d love to find my ideas made the world better for someone.

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