There’s a New App That Will Let You Book Hotel Rooms By the Minute
For everything from power naps to afternoon delights.
The internet has us spoiled with on-demand everything, from movies to food delivery to VR porn. Now, we have on-demand luxury hotel rooms we can rent by the minute, straight from our phones.
The brainchild of a San Francisco company of the same name, Recharge is an app that lets you rent hotel rooms by the minute, so you can have a little privacy anytime you want. For $40 an hour—about 67 cents a minute—you can book a room for as little or as long as you need it, to do whatever the hell you need to do.
Need to take a nap before happy hour? Book an hour and nap it out. Lunch not sitting well with you? Recharge can provide you with a safe haven to air things out in peace. Tinder date so hot you can’t keep it in your pants? Forgot your deodorant and need a shower? Just feel like staring at the wall? This app has got your back.
All you need to do is open up the Recharge app on your phone, find the nearest participating hotel, and check in at the front desk like normal. When you’re done doing whatever it is you needed to do, you simply check out using the app.
Users can also use hotel amenities while checked in, so a quick dip in the pool after a clandestine mid-day hookup? Go right ahead.
Sounds like a good idea, right? According to Fortune, the app already has some serious investors, including Scott and Cyan Banister, Rick Marini, Floodgate, and Google engineer Harry Cheung. Partnering hotels include the Hyatt Regency and Park Central Hotels.
Initially, hotels were worried Recharge would be like a Tinder add-on and turn hotel rooms into orgy pits, but a trial run by the Park Central Hotel proved otherwise when the hotel found no evidence of hanky-panky in the rooms. It may have been that the sex was really quiet and didn’t leave a mess, but still, no evidence. Well done, Recharge beta-testers.
“People most commonly use Recharge as they use Starbucks,” co-founder Emmanuel Bamfo told Fortune. “There’s ample evidence that people want to use these [hotel rooms] as a short-term living space beyond thinking about [sex],” he added, suggesting the hotel Wifi is more seductive than a woman. (Though the app is definitely used for sex, too)
For now, Recharge is only available in the Bay Area, but will soon expand to L.A., New York, and London, according to Bamfo’s TechCrunch interview.
We can’t wait to try it out.