FRANCE | BBsitter, the stress-free baby-sitting app to discover
(By Marie-Pacifique Blanckaert)
The beginning of the school year is a bit like taking a trip. You embark on a new journey you know little about. To get off to a great start and help balance the family's new schedules, a babysitter might come in handy. If it is your first time looking for some help or if you have moved to a new city or country, it can be really challenging to find a trustworthy babysitter for the kids.
Amalia de Montebello, a French-American mom living in Paris, was in that tricky situation two years ago and got motivated to launch her own baby-sitting service - BBsitterApp. She was quickly joined by another French mom, Sophie Decoutère, who was working as a lawyer in London. Together, they developed a baby-sitting app that relies mainly on other parents' babysitter networks. This way you can be sure that the person you hire has worked with other parents and you can even see comments about previous jobs. Knowing that the person you will hire for the first time has been referred by another parent really gives that extra sense of confidence that other baby-sitting app services lack.
Another added value of BBsitterApp is its very simple design. Amalia and Sophie focused on developing their service only on mobile phones and not online - unlike most of the other baby-sitting apps which often start as websites. They managed to create a powerful tool which was very easy to use. You can find a babysitter near you thanks to a GPS babysitter locator tool and pay online.
Without knowing it, Amalia and Sophie created a service also very beneficial to traveling families. How many of you wished you had a babysitter during family vacation to go have a nice romantic diner with your partner or simply get a couple of hours to yourself? When you are in a new place for a short period of time it is extremely hard to organize an improvised baby-sitting. With BBsitterApp, that's history!
To find a reliable nanny around you in minutes, you just need to download the app. Unlike other baby-sitting apps you don't need to start a monthly subscription that you would then have to think to cancel when you're back home; you can choose to pay a one-time fee for the baby-sitting.
The only requirement to use BBsitterApp is to be traveling in France - unfortunately the service is only available in this country for now. The good news though is that Amalia and Sophie want to make it a worldwide service. Moreover, an updated and more performing version with new tools will be released no later than spring.
