Our Chilean saga: start-up accelerator, COP25, and the revolution

We had quite a blow this month. After building an amazing community of hosts in Santiago to house international climate activists for the UN COP25 summit, the venue was suddenly moved to Madrid due to civil unrest in Chile. This is an unfortunate move, as it makes it very hard for South American climate organizations (among them many indigenous peoples) to participate in and negotiate at the COP – that once again ends up in a European city.

The sudden change of location means that a great many of our climate activist and NGO friends are now in need of low-cost accommodation in Madrid – so if you know anyone in Madrid up for hosting – please get in touch!

In Santiago, we continue to support the guests of the alternative summit Civil Society Climate Action Summit and the Cumbre de los Pueblos with a particular focus on the indigenous peoples of the Americas. .

We wish the best of luck to those of you in our community still traveling to Santiago, and those heading over to Madrid – keep up the important work!

Human Hotel in South America

What’s an accelerator program? We’re learning this fast, as we’re now part of one! And not just any accelerator program: Start-Up Chile is one of the world’s most successful start-up accelerators – programs that help entrepreneurs (and in this case artists) build and scale companies.

This summer, our co-founder Sixten moved to Santiago to join the program and launch the Human Hotel community in South America.

The start-up accelerator life is proving to be quite a radical change from the art world. But mostly very inspiring!

We’ve already connected with so many wonderful people and built up a great little team in Santiago. As we pass through the program, we’ll try to share our learnings with other outsiders and entrepreneurs that might be able to benefit from the insights. And avoid repeating our mistakes…

Read our guide for Start-Up Chile (Medium)

Almost 500 awesome hosts in just a few months makes Santiago Human Hotel’s largest community!

It’s been amazing to feel the support for the climate cause among local creators and change-makers in Chile. In just a few short months, we’ve see our Santiago community grow from zero to almost 500 hosts opening their homes for climate activists and other fellow community members.

Most incredible of all has been to see hosts keeping their prices low and friendly! Despite the high influx of COP25 guests that makes prices go up everywhere else.

At Airbnb they call their rising surge pricing “Smart Pricing”. Pricing that makes it hard for climate activists to afford housing when needed most! That seems pretty dumb to us.

Press article on our launch in Santiago (in Spanish)