Hotels turn to dating apps to create community among guests

Hotels are using dating apps to make connections and create a community among their guests.

Hotels Play a Bigger Role as Matchmakers With the Help of Technology

…thanks to the advent of mobile technology, hotels are leveraging their longstanding supporting role to an active role encouraging more meetings among their guests and the locals living nearby.

For many of these hotel brands, facilitating these connections is part and parcel with their efforts to be “experience platforms” or to be known for more than just being a place where you stay when you travel. Leveraging technology in this way helps them serve as modern-day community centers for travelers and locals alike, and helps them fill their lobbies and bars with paying patrons.

Some of the hotels and apps mentioned were:

• Marriott’s Moxi – partnered with dating/business networking app Bumble
• Sydell Group’s Line hotels – partnered with Bumble BFF (Bumble’s friendship-oriented networking app)
• Generator – created their own app called GenFriends with a “swipe” feature like Tinder to “match” with other travelers
• LifeHouse – created their own Life House Platform with a social networking feature to connect guests and approved locals
• The Standard – created their own Lobby app where guests can chat and plan to meet up

“It’s more awkward to be on a non-romantic social network meeting people, but when you travel, it’s more organic because everyone is outside of their home,” said [Rami Zeidan, CEO of Life House.] “And this is more than just offering a hostel-like vibe with communal spaces. There’s space for this in the luxury space, and for business travelers, too.”

Whether to encourage dating, networking, or simply shared travel experiences, all of these various apps share the same objective: to bring people together, and to do so in spaces that are designed just for that — the hotel.