Apps connect travellers with hotel-style luxuries
Home-sharing services such as Airbnb can be great money savers. But the greatest money savers tend to require skipping common hotel amenities such as fitness centres, spas, pools and room service. Now, naturally, there’s an app for that.
Make that apps, plural, including the following new ones that offer nonhotel guests access to hotel services.
At the beach and craving a burger but don’t want to leave your patch of paradise? Bring up EazyO on your phone. The service delivers restaurant food to your beach chair at a touch of the screen using stored payment information and GPS location technology. Currently only available in South Florida, and only for the iPhone, EazyO lists menus from major hotels such as the Fontainebleau Miami Beach and area beach concessions.
Dayuse lets users book hotel rooms during daylight hours, usually with the provision that day users arrive after 9 a.m. and check out in the late afternoon. With more than 4,000 hotel listings in 24 countries, the service touts itself as a place to check in before your accommodations allow — with particular appeal to jet-lagged flyers — and a way to gain access to hotel pools, gyms, spas and meeting space. The app is free and available for the iPhone and Google Android devices.
Resort Pass sells access to the pools, cabanas, gyms and spas of more than 80 resorts in seven sunny states, including California, Arizona, Florida and Hawaii. Options include the trendy Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale, Ariz. (prices start at $35 U.S.), the luxury-level Monarch Beach Resort in Orange County, Calif. (from $50), and the Sheraton Kona Resort & Spa at Keauhou Bay in Hawaii (access starts at $45).
Resort Pass is a web-based app. The service targets staycation locals as well as home-share or budget travellers. Its founder, Amanda Szabo, got the idea to start the service in 2016, when she was living in San Diego and craving a pool day at one of the city’s many resorts.
“I did sneak in once, and it was very uncomfortable when the whole point is to relax,” she said of her light-bulb moment. “Being at the hotel and seeing how empty it was on that particular day, I thought, ‘Take my money, I’ll pay you.’ ”