Erasmus Play

Erasmus Play is an aggregation platform (meta-search) for international student accommodation, which brings together all the market’s offerings into a single platform, allowing students to search, compare and book accommodation with the main platforms that provide this service.

There are regional and local platforms for booking student accommodation online and  Erasmus Play aims to bring into one site all accommodation available in all Europe. On one side, these online platforms are not very known to international students, and on the other hand, students have a hard time searching and comparing through internet and all platforms out there. Over 800.000 people participate in the Erasmus+ programme and over 50% of them have serious difficulties in finding and booking their new homes.

Erasmusplay.com aims to make their search and booking easier, faster and safer by aggregating into its meta- searcher all available online accommodations on local trustworthy platforms. Through Erasmus Play, users can search and compare accommodations and when they are ready to book, they will be directed to the correspondent platform.

Challenge

The concept of the pilot will be a meta-search engine similar to that of skyscanner, in which all student accommodations available in the market both short and mid-term will be displaced for comparison.

This is going to be possible through API feed the platforms are granting us. The main objective is to make search and comparison easy, while redirecting them to these trustworthy platforms once they are ready to book.

The pilot will include a search bar for cities, move in and move out dates. List of accommodation searches will be on the left and a map with the location on the right. It is expected that the pilot will show real in time feed from platforms, attract, retain users, create useful content for users and make accommodation least of their problems.

Work Plan

A UX design study already ordered will be available by the end of the month. The results and recommendations obtained will be the base for designing the pilot. Since the team started, we have obtained great information and knowledge of the market that will help build the pilot.

The duration of the pilot will luckily be in months prior to Erasmus movements, due to our startup being part of the startup program of the University of Zaragoza, agreement collaborations are in order with many Universities. With these agreements, our allied universities will give us feedback on what students need and redirect their students to the pilot. These agreements will be replicated through all European Universities. The pilot will stand between users (students) and online accommodation platforms. We have already reached out to some key platforms who have agreed to work with us, we will and have continued to reach out to other platforms, since we want to cover the whole Europe for student mobility.

Educational institutes>> Students and trainees>> Erasmus Play Pilot >> Online accommodation Platform. 

The users end are being handled by our collaboration agreements with educational institutes, which we will continue to push through all European universities. Though we have some key platforms who have agreed to work with us, the accommodation part will still be highly ongoing and in the middle stands the Pilot of the meta-search of Erasmus Play. Their educational institute will direct students and trainees to us and with their needs and necessities, they will search and compare, once they are ready to bool, they will be redirected to the correspondent online platform. 

Quality and safety is a fundamental pillar of our activity as also demanded by our allied universities, therefore we are only contacting and going to work with high valued platforms on google, trustpilot, users opinion and other measures of trust and quality. These platforms have to have verified accommodations, safe payments and excellent customer service.

We will study and monitor the interaction of users, their needs, questions and doubts to improve the pilot. Data analysis will be highly employed to spot major issues concerning student accommodation mobility for institutions and the public.