What is the difference between co-staying and co-living?
Co-living is a way to live. Co-staying is a way to go to an event. Both mean sharing a property with people you hadn't met before, but one lasts months and the other lasts a long weekend. That's the difference that matters.
Co-living is long-term shared housing. You rent a private room, share the kitchen and living spaces, and the people down the hall become your housemates for months or years. It's a housing choice.
Co-staying is short-term. Like-minded people going to the same event stay together for a few nights in a villa full of your people or in rooms at the same hotel, and they arrive already connected instead of alone. It's a travel choice. It also extends to hotels. Meaning you can ‘co-stay’ with others in the same hotel and still feel part of the group.
Is Bubbl co-living? No. Bubbl, the community-powered event travel platform, is co-staying.
Why a short stay changes everything
Live with someone for a year and you learn how they load the dishwasher. Share a house for four nights and you never find out.
On a short stay, people are on their best behavior. They're on a trip, not in a routine. The things that wear thin over a long lease, like the dishes, the noise and whose turn it is to buy milk, never have time to come up.
And everyone is there for the same reason: the same race, the same festival, the same summit, the same good time. That shared reason gives you something a lease never will, which is something to talk about at breakfast.
Is co-staying like a hostel?
No. You get your own room, and your own bathroom where you choose it. You're matched with your people before you arrive, with six layers of trust and safety behind every stay. It isn't a trade of comfort for cost. It's arriving connected instead of arriving alone. Also, a co-stay happens at every level of travel budget from $150 per night to our Bubbl Luxe category which is more than $500 per person per night. There is value for everyone to co-stay as everyone likes networking and meeting new people no matter what budget you have. And the co-stay powered Bubbl is the way to do it.
What does co-staying feel like?
It feels like arriving already part of a group of friends, and the anticipation of making new friends. You walk in to people who know your name already, may know a little about you, you may have already chatted in the app, and are there for the same reason. It takes the nervousness of going alone away and if you are an introvert it especially reduces your social anxiety because once you are in your Bubbl and going to the event, you immediately have a group of friends to already be there at all of the different activities with. By the second morning, it feels like a weekend with old friends you only just met: coffee on the terrace, plans for the night, someone saving you a seat in the Uber.
It's the feeling our founder saw again and again in eight years of running shared ski cabins in Lake Tahoe. Co-staying isn't new. Being able to book one is, at the events that matter: F1, SXSW, Sundance, Art Basel, Cannes, Coachella and Davos and social gatherings of any kind.
The world is your Bubbl. Find your people for your next event at bubbl.co.
