Airbnb has caught on pretty well with people who want to travel abroad and stay in accommodation that's not a hotel, but there's now a similar service popping up for people who are willing to share their bathrooms.
Yes, that's right, the creatively named Airpnp is hoping that you're willing to pay good money to use the facilities at someone else's house, rather than try and find a questionably clean public toilet.
Airpnp's tagline is that they will find you a clean, comfortable bathroom no matter where you are, and through their app (on iOS) and their website, you can have a scout around and find a nice bathroom in your area that you can pay to use.
The service started as a "quasi-joke" as a result of the difficulty that the founders had in getting a bathroom in New Orleans during Mardi Gras in 2014, but they seem to be taking it a bit more seriously now, and the service has begun to take off around the world.
Not all of the people charge (as Entrepreneur point out, Antwerp in Belgium in particular is good for kind souls offering free toilets), but the average price seems to be around the $5 mark. However, there are some users who charge depending on whether you're going for a number one or a number two, which is probably fair enough, you have to think of the cleanup costs.
Signing up to the service allows you to set a period of availability for when people can use your bathroom, while you can be pinged through the app or get a text when someone is looking for access, so you can decide who to let in. Your address isn’t made available until someone has already paid to access your bathroom, so you don't need to worry too much about getting weirdos knocking on your door shouting "an bhfuil cead agam dul go dtí an leithreas?"
Anyway, so far there's only one user in Ireland that we can see, and they're offering the use of their loo for free, which is pretty sound. While we're not sure that it's the best way to make money, if you get enough of a customer base going, you might be able to cover the cost of the water charges. We can't imagine you'd be flush with cash though...
Via Entrepreneur. Main pic via Isaac Mao/Flickr
