I received an e-mail from Manda at Roomorama roughly a year ago. She realized that I was a world traveler and I was living overseas for quite a while and commented on how I look for rooms and apartments to rent rather than just staying in a hostel. I find that when I moved to a new country I really want to make sure that I get to know the culture and see more than just a tourist attractions. She asked me to do a review of the service and I was more than glad to provide since they had such a great selection of places to stay.
Roomarama Home Page
My idea was to use the service to find a place to live in Eastern Africa, unfortunately they don’t have inventory there so I decided that I would look for a room on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro for New Year’s. One of the things that I liked about the services that you can speak to the owners directly and it’s a very easy platform to use where you send the request, the owners reply back, and you’re either approved or denied depending on availability.
Being that Rio de Janeiro during New Year’s is one of the peak seasons in the city, I wasn’t able to locate an apartment for rent, at least not a affordable apartment. As with Carnival in Brazil, prices were outrageous for simple rooms with no air-conditioning. If you know anything about me by reading my travel blog is that I don’t move anywhere where I don’t have A/C or reliable internet for day trading.
I also dropped the ball because I wasn’t as focused on finding a room in Rio and did not follow-up the way I should’ve. I changed plans and decided to rent a place and Medellin, Colombia. I was able to find a place pretty quickly and the owner got back to me right away.
I found that the platform online was very user-friendly and I like how they add a social network feature to the site. If you’re renting a room from somebody you want to know that they aren’t psycho and being able to look at their pictures is a great way of seeing that! Another thing that I really like is they have eight different language sites that you can choose from, anything from the Chinese version, two Danish, and even Korean.
Think of Roomorama as an online peer-to-peer network for renting places to stay. If you want to rent a room out or even an apartment you can uploaded on Roomorama and start to receive requests for people that want to rent your place. I can’t comment on how the feature works as I travel around the world quite a bit and don’t own my own place to rent. But I think it is cool that you make a little extra money by renting a room out or even find a renter by placing your place online with Roomorama. Even though I had some trouble finding a place in Brazil it was very easy to book my apartment in Medellin Colombia.
My room was not as described and looked nothing like the pictures that were on the site so that is something that they do need to make sure is verified. I didn’t have a problem however because it was still a great room with a great’s bathroom suite.
Whenever I am looking for a place to rent I now find myself looking through Roomorama’s ever growing inventory of places because I really liked the platform and how to use it. I actually almost book another room in Brazil since I am planning on moving to Rio de Janeiro at the end of this month.
I’ve had a lot of luck with apartment and looking for places through craigslist and finding apartments to rent from holders online. This isn’t the best way to do things since you can send a PayPal deposit and never hear from an owner again so I really like the format of being able to have the security and the platform where I know a person is verified like Roomorama.
Overall was a great experience and I can tell you that as I build my travel guides I will definitely recommend using Roomorama to find apartments overseas. The service was very easy to use, and I would recommend that you use Roomorama to find a place, whether it’s a room or apartment, when you travel overseas. You can find everything that you need about the location that you’re looking to rent like pictures, reviews, and great customer service as well.
Being a long-term travel blogger sharing my stories to this site I definitely plan on doing it as well. See you in Brazil!
