Millennials are the largest generation to date, making up 31.5% of the population at 7.7 billion people, according to The Wandering RV. Amazingly, this generation has an estimated $200 billion of spending power, making them an ideal demographic for travel companies.
Forming a company in the middle of the lodging industry’s darkest time is quite a difficult challenge to take on. “With our back in the corner we had to make the decision to either lay employees off or grow the business, we chose the latter”, said Josiah Myers, CEO and Founder of Airriva. “One of my proudest moments in my career thus far is deciding to keep the Airriva team together during the pandemic, while most of our competitors were downsizing, laying employees off, and even going bankrupt.”
Airriva aims to solve common complaints many Airbnb users experience. For example, a common user complaint consists of additional booking fees that are tacked on at the end, in comparison to the original price quote. Airriva solidified their business model around this major issue with the addition of a tech solution utilizing SmartSurj. “SmartSurj solves the pricing issue by surging real time pricing at the local level of each market with pricing based on other short term rentals, hotels, convention centers, flights, and vegas line data. This has allowed us to achieve 80% through 2020 and leading room market rates compared to comparable hotels occupancy rates of 15-20%,” Myers adds.
A study of consumer behavior showed that 94% of customers are likely to be loyal to a brand that offers complete transparency, according to Tailer Brands. “While Airbnb has had one of the most successful rises to any tech-platform in history, they still haven’t solved the issue of trust when it comes to branding. The guest doesn’t know what they are going to get ahead of time and the host or inventory partner doesn’t either,” said Myers.
When it comes to what millennials are looking for in a vacation, the answer seems to be: authentic, cultural experiences packed with information and discovery, according to Stratos Jets. “When creating Airriva we wanted to give ourselves some time to figure out what the ‘right’ brand to scale would be,” Myers added. “Thus, came the idea of unique, modern, and central. Through recent data we found that the number one reason customers book is location.”
For example, Airriva’s downtown Cleveland Superior Living Complex is a 57-unit boutique living space in a renovated historic building that combines a unique historic property with modern home finishes. The space comes fully equipped with a first-floor restaurant bar, The Green Goat, created by famous restaurateur Bobby George aimed at offering health-forward food and beverage choices for both people and their pets.
According to Finances Online, 78% of millennials prefer to spend their earnings on experiences and not things. Airriva is the first of its kind in offering a true loyalty program catered to the millennial mindset.
Our name and tagline were developed with the millennial in mind. At Airriva we don’t think of our guests as customers but more as friends. This was the whole premise of creating our loyalty rewards program, The FriendZone. It’s really easy to lose a customer but really hard to lose a true friend. Ideally, we strive to implement the concept of treating people with how they want to be treated, as friends not as customers.
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