About
Anyone who has looked for a shortlet in Lagos knows the shape of it. A number from a friend of a friend. Photographs that may or may not be the building. An inspection fee paid to somebody whose surname you never learn, for a viewing that may not happen.
The obvious complaint is on the guest's side: too many listings that are not real, too many fees that buy nothing. The less obvious one is on the other side of the same transaction. The people running these buildings, and many of them run them carefully, have nothing to run them with.
A group chat holds the bookings. A notebook holds the cash. A cleaner finds out about a checkout by being telephoned. When a business like that is asked to prove it is trustworthy, it has nothing to point at, because everything it knows lives in one person's phone.
So the two problems turn out to be one. You cannot verify a business that keeps no records. And you cannot ask a business to keep records for the sake of a marketplace: it has to be worth doing on a Tuesday when nobody is watching.
DenHunt starts from the operations side and earns the marketplace from it. A business runs its properties, calendars, staff, housekeeping and money here because that is genuinely easier than the group chat. Publishing to the marketplace is then one switch, and the listing is not an advert somebody typed: it is the same room, the same price and the same availability the business is already working from.
What we are building
app.denhunt.com. Properties, units, bookings, guests, staff, housekeeping, payments and reports, for shortlet and hostel businesses.
Where people find somewhere to stay. Search by area, see the place properly, and talk to whoever runs it, on the phone you already look for places on.
Verified businesses, listings that need a real photo before anyone sees them, and inspection fees held in escrow rather than handed over and hoped about.
How we work
Written down early, because every one of them is easier to keep now than after the first quarter somebody wants to hit a number.
Every property on DenHunt belongs to a business with an account, a real photo and an operation behind it. Nothing gets published because a marketplace looked empty.
You pay the business. We charge the business for the software. Wedging a fee between a guest and a host, and calling it a service, is exactly the thing this market already has too much of.
Verified means we checked the business is real and the place is theirs. It does not mean we inspected every room this morning, and we would rather write that down than let a badge imply more than it is worth.
