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Roam has constructed an international housing network for digital nomads
- neonate 9y agohttp://archive.is/WtX8f http://archive.is/WtX8f
- lostmsu 9y agoDoes anybody know pricing? That article omits it, or I missed it.
- TekMol 9y agoWelcome to Hacker News. We pride ourselves to be a very clever and technological savvy bunch. This said, here is your initiation ritual: Imagine you just read an article about a site called 'Roam'. Now you wonder about the pricing at which Roam offers their services. What could you do to find out?
- a13n 9y agoTheir account is twice as old as yours.
- zerostar07 9y agoThey advertise on airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/21940028 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/21940028 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14222898 https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14222898
- kiwidrew 9y agoThe Miami location is $120/night for 7-29 nights, and $79/night for 30+ nights. The Roam website [1] falls into the standard "travel booking site antipattern" of not giving any sort of pricing overview and instead forcing the user to randomly throw dates into the booking form. [1] https://www.roam.co/places/miami https://www.roam.co/places/miami
- stupidcar 9y agoThe Roam site seems to require you to book at at particular location, with check-in and check-out dates, and a per-day pricing structure. How is that really any different from a traditional hotel/hostel? It'd be more interesting if they were offering, say, the possibility to get a 6-month tenancy agreement with the option to freely move between locations during that time. But that doesn't seem to be the case?
- a13n 9y agoLogistically I don't that what you describe would actually work. What if you show up and a place is fully booked? As a digital nomad myself, the difference I see with Roam is it comes with a working space and therefore a network of like-minded people. At a hotel your Wi-Fi might suck, you'd still have to scramble to find a coffee shop to work from, and other tenants would likely be people on holiday rather than digital nomads.
- stupidcar 9y agoWell, obviously there has to be some kind of booking system, but it could work on a more ad-hoc basis. You can stay in your current location for as long as you like, or you can login and see which other locations have capacity, then let them know you'll be coming in day or so. Would this be less convenient in certain situations, where you had definite travel plans in advance? Sure. But it'd also encourage and enable the kind "nomadic" approach they claim to be delivering, and you could always use a regular hotel if you absolutely had to be in a particular city one a particular date. As it stands, "business hotel with guaranteed decent wifi" might be a useful market niche, but it's a far cry from the kind paradigm-shift this seems to be being spun as. And I think there would be something quite interesting in doing it for real.
- a13n 9y agoFlight fares and tourist visa applications don't really jive with the last minute "we'll come and go when we want" mentality. It's quite expensive to travel this way, and you usually need an exit flight booked before entering. Otherwise you're gonna have a heck of a time convincing the border guard you're actually planning on leaving. I'm all for a world with fewer borders and this flexible mentality you describe. I just think it'll take a while for governments / transportation to make it feasible.
- NiklasMort 9y agoWay too expensive (those are 4 Star Hotel prices, at least for Bali and Tokyo)...might as well just stay in a hotel? The only advantage maybe is you meet fellow nomads but one can do that anyway.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago> The only advantage maybe is you meet fellow nomads. These coworker/coliving spaces advertise heavily in the digital nomad community and there’s often a suggestion that hanging around fellow nomads will magically make useful new connections and boost their businesses. Maybe there are some entrepreneurs who benefit from that kind of socializing, but a lot of digital nomads are a solitary bunch – if not outright hostile to other nomads who, they fear, might compete with them for clients.
- eps 9y agoIt's a bit of a stretch to call 4 cities they have a presence in an "international housing network."
- tomcooks 9y agoHey cut them some slack, PR articles got to follow certain grammar standards! /s
- zerostar07 9y agoSomeone needs to make an an airbnb for this maybe? this looks expensive
- Tade0 9y agoI wonder how much market research did they do before releasing this. Or maybe this is aimed at a very specific group within the nomad community, but you have to be in it to know?
- 1337biz 9y agoSome people like to spend their holidays in all-inclusive resorts where they never really have to leave the hotel area. Sometimes I think these digital nomad offers target similarly minded people.
- a13n 9y agoAs a digital nomad, we decided not to use Roam because of cost. It's basically like paying SF rent, but in countries with a third the cost of living. Being a digital nomad is definitely stressful. You have to constantly look for a good place to work. It's hard to meet like-minded people. Roam simplifies a lot of that, and I see the value. It's like the WeWork of co-working / co-living spaces. I'm sure they'll do well as the movement grows.
- virtualwhys 9y ago> It's basically like paying SF rent, but in countries with a third the cost of living. Come to Chiang Mai and pay 1/20th :) Asia is incredibly inexpensive, can't believe how much money I've blown on rent in the western hemisphere over the last 15 years. > Being a digital nomad is definitely stressful. You have to constantly look for a good place to work. Indeed, finding the next spot is typically time consuming and hit or miss, particularly when trying to do so via the internet.
- freakz 9y agoIs there good internet throughout Chiang Mai? I had a friend stayed there for a week as a guess in a house with a 50/50 up and down internet connection. He couldn't tell me details because such a brief stay and the house owner not being there. I'm surprised there's such speed there. Would love to relocate to Thailand if I could have such stable fast speeds.
- bitreality 9y agoInternet in Chiang Mai is solid. Very solid uptime, and really cheap 4G data as a fallback. http://www.ais.co.th/fibre/en/ http://www.ais.co.th/fibre/en/ You can see some of the services available there.
- virtualwhys 9y agoI get 50mbs/20mbs here in my apartment for $20/month; connection is solid. If you need a really fast connection you can get 500mbs/200mbs, residential no less. Also have unlimited mobile data plan with AIS for $20/month, which is really surprisingly fast given what you're paying. Thailand's been an eye opener on many levels, will definitely be heading back here next winter if I'm able to.
- friendly_chap 9y agoShameless PR piece. I wonder how much do you have to pay to get fluff articles in the NY Times? Does anyone know, even if just approximately?
- psergeant 9y agoI think the MO is generally to sweeten up the journalist, not the paper; actual paid adverts need to be marked as such. Roam will have a PR agency with relationships with journalists who they keep sweet, and will occasionally suggest should write articles about their clients.
- a13n 9y agoI think it's less about paying NYT and more about finding a story that they think their readers want to read. If NYT content were just advertisements / sponsored content, people wouldn't read it, and that'd hurt NYT's brand. I doubt they paid for this.
- pjc50 9y agoThis is the NYT magazine; I see it as more like travel writing than anything else. One of the downsides of digital articles is that it's no longer clear which section of the paper they're in and therefore whether they should be considered reporting, investigative reporting, reprinted press releases, "lifestyle", or whatever. I suspect they "paid" simply by having an interesting enough story, giving free accomodation to the writer of the article, possibly other expenses included, and giving access to the founder. It's not exactly a pure puff piece either. The writer (https://twitter.com/chaykak https://twitter.com/chaykak) puts in subtle clues that he regards it as a Ballardian dystopia, and has retweeted someone's description of his article as "The Talented Mr Ripley, but with digital nomads"
- ghaff 9y agoExactly. I don't write a lot of reviews and other pieces that are mostly disconnected from my day job. But I still get maybe 50 pitches a day. Most are shotgunned crap that have nothing to do with what I write about. And most of the rest just don't interest me. But every now and then, I get a pitch to review a book or gadget or service that looks interesting and I take them up on it. Absolutely no guarantee of a positive review but, if they get me to look, it's just PR doing their job. Too many people here have this ivory tower fantasy of writers sitting in their offices thinking great thoughts and coming up with ideas about their next article out of the aether.
- devgutt 9y agoI think every nomad had thought a solution about housing because this is a real problem for us and really annoying. I have my own house back in my country that I rent. I would be more than receptive to lend my house to a service so I could rent someone else's house somewhere in the world. Growing a network of houses by yourself, as Roam is doing, is costly and I think inneficient.
- kaybe 9y agoHouse exchange services are well-established, though mostly used for holidays. (eg homexchange.com)
- venantius 9y agoI've stayed at a Roam before in London. On the upside, it was pleasant, clean, quiet, and conveniently located. The room was a bit small and the in-room fridge was tiny, but those are common traits for temporary housing in London. The real downside to me is a conflict inherent in Roam's branding and strategic positioning. They position themselves as being for digital nomads (i.e. people who are working as permanent travelers) and assume that what I want as such a person is to actively engage and spend time with other people doing the same. To that end they're aggressively friendly, which I found a bit off-putting. I travel to be integrated into the communities in which I am traveling, not to hang out with other travelers.
- pokemongoaway 9y agoHaha that's what the fad is becoming! I've been to many "nomad" cities and always avoid meeting so-called nomads - and cringe when I see one in a cafe who brought 2 external monitors and is having a "standup" call...
- notahacker 9y agoDifferent strokes for different folks. Many people travel with no particular expectation of engaging on any kind of deep level with the local community of a place they're visiting for a few weeks, and engaging in a multinational community of people with a shared interest in travel, remote working and potentially even complementary knowledge and skillsets isn't necessarily a less worthwhile thing than hanging out with locals as the novelty foreigner. More to the point, unless they massively overdo forced socialisation, the two shouldn't be mutually exclusive, and a well-run programme ought to have some non-commercial interaction with local people built in anyway. tbh I'd have thought the community aspect was the sole justification for choosing a Roam over an alternative short term rental
- xya3453 9y agoThat is Roam's entire value add. The large majority of digital nomads are looking to find likeminded individuals with the same constraints in the same foreign city as they are. Similar to hostels when backpacking. If you want to be integrated into the communities of whom your traveling you want to be crashing on their couches or in the very least renting a local Airbnb.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tomcooks 9y agoThe owner of this company knows how to order coffee in spanish, wow. /s Don't bother learning the local language. Don't bother hanging out at local cheap bars. Don't bother paying a fair price for things. Abuse parts of the world and turn them into playgrounds for "bloggers" and "YouTube creators". Digital nomads, especially from the Silicon Valley startup area, are the new digital colonialists destroying Asia and Europe (viz. the gentification of Thailand and Portugal) so that they can have 9$ massages and a story to tell. Fuck you, from the deepest part of my soul. Let the downvotes pour. /rant
- feelix 9y agoYour resentment may or may not be valid. Can you explain any reasoning behind it?
- tomcooks 9y agoSure, resentment about what? - This PR article pushed on HN? - Gentrification of beautiful cities? - Entitled colonialism?
- dageshi 9y agoCan't speak for Portugal but having traveled around south east asia on and off for 10 years now I'm pretty sure the Thai's are quite capable of gentrifying their own country, I think they call it "progress".
- tomcooks 9y agoObviously it's always the locals starting the gentrification, after all they're the ones selling buildings to foreign rental companies. That's why it's mandatory to mingle with locals, in their own language, and not alter the local economy with stupid standards. The difference between self-gentrification or gentrification based on foreign investments, just as in Portugal, is that on one side you have a country that decides from its own fate. On the other side you have foreigners setting high prices and changing the local economy. The "progress" you mention tends to happen in cities with a lot of of disinvested foreigneers. I invite you to check the rent data for Chiang Mai and Lisbon between 2000 and 2018, or better yet ask to locals. You'll notice a striking difference in prices, especially for what concerns rent and food, compared to places without masses of digital colonialists.
- spodek 9y agoThe "digital nomads" I know fly more than anyone I know. The discounts they find make them beneficiaries of our not accounting for externalities of the pollution from flying. Does anyone know the carbon footprint or pollution levels their lifestyle causes? My intuition may be off, but they would seem high.
- MagnumOpus 9y agoCarbon footprint of flying is around 0.2kg CO2/mile, carbon footprint of commuting by car is around 0.4kg CO2/mile. So a car commuter with a 20 mile commute emits 2 tonnes of CO2 per year; a digital nomad without a car commute would need to fly around 20,000 miles a year to get the same amount of carbon emission -- which is the equivalent of two return flights from London to Bangkok, or 10-11 return flights from London to Lisbon. So they are roughly on the same order of magnitude as a suburban car commute, but could go substantially higher with weekly return flights...
- spodek 9y agoThank you for the comparison. According to this site https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=1057086 https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=10570..., London-Bangkok round trip by coach is 3.6 tons of CO2, so two r/t flights would be 7.2. The ones I know travel that much several times a year, which puts them over an order of magnitude above a suburban commuter, at least for travel costs. So compared to most of the world, who don't have cars to commute, they're multiple orders of magnitude over. Darn. I had hoped they weren't polluting so much. I hope they enjoy the environments they are helping pollute before they're gone.
- xya3453 9y agoSeems ingenuous to compare digital nomads that are flying around the world several times a year to commuters who never take vacations or fly for business.
- adamcharnock 9y agoAs someone who is living in a community in London, and building a community-based house in rural Portugal, the comments here feel somewhat relevant. My ideal is a situation where people can freely move between both houses (with some element of planning/booking). However, in our case only about 30-50% of people in our community have a work-life that could support this. The result is that the Portugal house could often be somewhat empty. I would be interested in some kind of digital nomad airbnb. As hosts we would want to be clear about what our community is about / expectations etc, and also be able to be selective above those who may join us. Couchsurfing is another option that we could look to, but I'm not too keen on that demographic (or at least my experience of it). How about couchsurfing for professionals, with actual bedrooms, longer says (1 month+), who are maybe a bit older / more mature etc? Please forgive the rambling. Maybe this exists already? Edit: tomcooks's rant has given me something to think about.
- beatpanda 9y agoIf you're paying for this, why bother traveling? If you just want to be surrounded by like-minded laptop-bound people that are just like you, why leave home?
- cseelus 9y ago$2373.00 for March 1st till March 31st in Miami and $1650.00 for Ubud (Bali) seem quite expensive.
- sethhochberg 9y agoI did a month at Roam Bali last year and it was super common for folks to show up for a couple weeks, meet people around the place, and then all rent a bungalow somewhere nearby instead of staying at Roam for the rest of their journey. They're really going to have to do something to encourage people to stick around if they want to avoid that happening (lower rates? better community?) It was a good experience overall but if I were ever back in Ubud I'd go out on my own now that I know the area a bit better instead of paying Roam rates for the package deal.