Have a series of video conferences in a large common space, before surfing a few waves in the evening and sharing meals and activities with roommates you just met the day before. All for a few days or a few weeks, before flying off to somewhere else. Combining business and pleasure, work and leisure, individual and collective, ephemeral coliving proposals in exceptional spots, in France or abroad, are multiplying.
Cap-Ferret or Cape Town? Morzine or Tenerife? Freelancers and nomadic employees are now spoiled for choice to settle down wherever they want, without fear of finding themselves alone and having to struggle with a weak Internet connection. Taking advantage of the development of workation ”, contraction of the English words “ work » (“work”) and “ holiday » (“holidays”), or in French “tracances”, this concept of working far from one’s office or home, in places where it is good to rest (seaside, mountain, countryside), gave birth to everything an ecosystem of hybrid spaces with a view
Emmanuel Guisset founded the Outsite site in 2015, based on his personal experience. Five years earlier, the Belgian entrepreneur, based in California, found himself “ digital nomad » after leaving his start-up. Tired of looking for a place to live and work, he transformed a villa in Santa Cruz, near San Francisco, into a mixed stopover. The formula takes. With his first clients, who have since become partners, he is today at the head of one of the main short-term coliving operators (with Selina, a hotel chain created in 2014 by two Israeli entrepreneurs): to set up their computer and their suitcases, its approximately five thousand regular customers have the choice between around fifty destinations.
Escaping anti-Airbnb measures
In 2021, the start-up is moving from large houses to small hotels, “easier to transform into coliving spaces, from ten to fifty rooms, with large common areas”, explains the forty-year-old, who is currently taking up his winter quarters in Costa Rica, before flying off to Portugal in a few months. The “colivers” (mostly Americans working in tech and marketing, or creatives) stay there between three days and four months maximum. “Beyond that, people get into habits and the group dynamic is broken. »
Offering properties mainly in Latin America (Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, etc.), in the United States (California, Colorado, New York, etc.) and in Southern Europe, the start-up, thanks to 300 million euros provided at the end of 2023 by three investment funds, hopes to quadruple the number of its rooms in five years, to exceed 3,500. In its sights, Portugal (Madeira is one of the most popular destinations for “colivers”) and the Spain, but also France. Already established in Bordeaux and the Basque Country, Outsite should open, after the Olympic Games, its first short-term coliving in Paris. Less expensive in terms of costs and personnel than traditional hotels, the model has the advantage of escaping the limitations and prohibitions affecting the rental of furnished tourist accommodation (Airbnb type), already in effect or planned in many large cities.
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