About LOVU
Lovu is a travel app that is all about romance and couples' trips. From wedding proposals to destination weddings to honeymoons to anniversaries to vow renewals to babymoons, romantic trips are easy on Lovu, where consumers get to develop a direct one-to-one relationship with hotels and travel advisors. We are removing middlemen like online travel companies that provide no real value and putting consumers in control of their romantic travel experience.
Mission
We devote everything we do to romance travel, making it easy for couples to find and book the romantic experiences for celebratory milestone trips like destination wedding, honeymoon, anniversaries, babymoons, vow renewals, wedding proposals and other romantic vacations.
This is the heart of our business.
For Consumers
- The time consumers would take to research, plan, and book romantic trips
- The indirect relationships consumers would strike with hotels
- The annoyance of finding the right person at a hotel to help consumers and or give them a deal
- The time it would take consumers to find an experienced destination and or romance travel advisor to help plan romantic milestone trips
For Hotels & Resorts
- Reduce the cost of bookings, add thousands of dollars to your bottomline
- Their ongoing challenge to winning direct consumer bookings
- The constant battle to lowering distribution cost
- The challenges achieving high return on advertising spending
- The ongoing challenges with direct guest engagement
- The ongoing challenge getting guest to sign up for loyalty programs
- The challenge getting guest to become social media brand ambassadors
For Travel Advisors
- No commissions sharing - travel advisors get to keep all their commissions, no sharing with LOVU
- Commission protection on future user bookings (we will notify you when them when their LOVU clients are looking to book aga
- Find a Travel Advisor "call-to-action" button on all unclaimed hotel profiles
- High-quality referrals - weddings, honeymoons, vow renewals, etc.
- Spotlight profile on your experience with contact information
- 1:1 messaging engagement
- Part of an exclusive and curated community of top-rated peers
- Virtual Sales Training - Mastermind Virtual Classes with industry-leading expert, Alan Berg
Why Now
We have found a huge gap in the Travel Industry and is fulfilling that need.
No Apps Available
There are no travel apps or romantic travel portal websites fulfilling this need.
Under Serviced
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs- Expedia.com, booking.com, etc.) are under servicing the romantic segment of travel.
Fragmented Marketplace
Too many travel websites to filter through to find the best options for romantic trips.
Self Planners & Bookers
Self-booking of romantic trips are the norm. You just can’t afford to mess this up!
Lots of Legwork
To finding and book the best romantic travel experiences directly with service providers.
Direct is Better
For consumers and travel service providers (hotels, activity providers, etc.) direct is always better and preferred.
Size of the Market
Compared to regular vacays, couples are shelling out three times as much money. The market for destination weddings and honeymoons in the US alone has exceeded $25 billion. Consider all these components.
- $12 billion+ U.S. Honeymoon Spending
- $16 billion+ U.S. Destination Wedding Spending
- $300 billion+ Global Wedding Industry Spending
- $2.5 trillion+ Globally Luxury Travel Market by 2025
Meanwhile the market for apps is undeniably massive. It is estimated that the global number of smartphone users will rise to 3.5 billion over the course of 2020. In addition, there are more connected mobile devices globally (7.94 billion) than people, and nearly 90% of mobile internet time is spent in apps (emarketer). Most importantly, mobile users prefer apps to browsers. When we looked at the mobile industry research on time spent with 2.7 billion smartphone users, 90% of the total mobile time was spent on apps, and the average weekly time spent using travel apps was 19 minutes. (Source: BuildFire Statista 2021)
What’s in it for Consumers
- Direct 1:1 messaging with top romantic hotels and travel advisors
- A curated community of the best-of-best destination and romance travel advisors to help them plan
- Exclusive deals and perks
- VIP guest experience
- Romance RFPs for your milestones celebratory travel
- Save hours on research and booking, finding all the romantic hotspots in one place
- Free nights and more
Why would Hotels Participate?
- No commissions, add thousands of dollars to your bottomline
- High-quality referrals in the form of RFPs, emails, calls, web, booking engine, and reward and loyalty club visits
- Engage 1:1 with high-value guests
- Top-rated romance travel advisors available to assist guests and hotels
- Loyalty program membership boost - first-time reward club enrollments
- Brand ambassadors via social sharing of emotional travel experiences
- Guest loyalty, repeat customers
- Virtual mastermind sales training with industry-leading weddings and events expert, Alan Berg
Why Would Travel Advisors Participate
- No commissions sharing - you get to keep all your commissions
- Commission protection on future LOVU users bookings (we will notify you when your clients/ users looking to book future trips)
- High-quality referrals - weddings, honeymoons, vow renewals, etc.
- Spotlight profile on your experience with contact information
- 1:1 messaging engagement
- A curated community of top-rated peers
- Virtual Sales Training - Mastermind Virtual Classes with industry-leading expert, Alan Berg
How much does LOVU cost?
LOVU is free to consumers. There is a freemium account that everyone hotel gets, and a paid subscription plan starting with our complimentary RoomX plan that involves room exchange for subscription, and Gold, Diamond, and a Platinum plan for multi-property hospitality brands. For travel advisors, there is only one plan.
SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities & Threats)
Strengths - We are making research, planning, and booking celebratory romantic trips straightforward and fun for everyone involved.
Weaknesses - Capital. We need money to move fast. For this reason, we are raising funds by pre-selling the platform to early adaptors and launching an Indiegogo consumer campaign in the coming week. We are providing complimentary room nights at prestigious hotels in exchange for your pledge.
Opportunities - There are more mobile-connected devices globally than people, and nearly 90% of mobile internet time is spent in apps. The business of romance travel is massive. The market for destination weddings and honeymoons in the U.S. is over $25 billion. Lovu will serve the global marketplace of romance travel.
Threats - We are disrupting a high-value guest segment of the travel industry. We are not a commission model. Online travel sites can be a threat if they change their business model and stop underserving romantic consumers. Consumer behaviors and technology changes can also become a threat. Our users are the heart of our business. We will continuously challenge the status quo to make it easy for couples to find and book-direct their romantic travel experiences. We will consistently modify our technology to stay competitive and relevant to our users.
How are you going to get users?
We will be relying primarily on content marketing. Our B2C content marketing (travel consumers) efforts will include brand marketing, specialized media, social media, public relations campaigns, expert advice marketing, influencer marketing, Etc. For our B2B content marketing to hotels, resorts, vacation rentals, etc., we will include social media ( LinkedIn), public relations, industry press, expert advice marketing, Etc.
Ask
Seed Capital Investment: $250,000 - $500,000.
Terms: Convertible note.
Use of Proceeds
- Complete Technology Development
- UI/UX Design
- Programmers/coders
- Database & Content licenses
- Digital Marketing
Round 1: VC Funding
$2,000,000
Terms: TBD
Use of Proceeds:
Technology Development
Programmers
Digital Marketing
Sales Manager
Content Manager
Operational expenses
Founder
Shri Lildharrie is a travel tech, media pro, and entrepreneur with over 20 years' travel industry experience and an expert in digital marketing, Software as a Solution (SaaS), and web development. He spent nine years at world's leading wedding website, The Knot, driving revenues. During his tenure at The Knot, he generated over $50 million. Over the past ten years, Shri has been helping hospitality companies succeed online using a variety of forward-thinking technologies. Before that, Shri founded and operated the hospitality company, Karma a restaurant and nightlife company in NYC
Product Designer, Developer and Co-Founder
Artyom Sklyarov is an accomplished and highly skilled digital creative direct, designer, and developer with over 28 years of interactive media experience and a portfolio of innovative, award-winning, and technically challenging projects. He has work over 500 hospitality industry awards. His works includes loweshotels.com, viceroyhotelsandresorts.com, hardrockhotels.com