Time for a Recharge: Push Button Hotel Rooms By the Hour

San Francisco-based Recharge, a one-year-old startup whose app enables users to book short hotel visits for just $40 an hour, or $.67 a minute, has closed $2.3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Binary Capital, with participation from Floodgate, entrepreneur-investor Scott Bannister, and early Google engineer Harry Cheung.

The company has established partnerships with Starwood Properties and Hyatt in the Bay Area. With today’s on-demand economy disrupting industries like never before, hotel’s could benefit from Recharge’s model, which allows them to earn revenue from unbooked rooms, creating a supplementary revenue stream. Recharge cofounder Emmanuel Bamfo says the idea is similar to short-term office rental services like Breather, which allows customers to rent private office space and conference rooms for anywhere from 30 minutes to a full day. Recharge aims to do the same for participating hotels.