With the growing demand for affordable and community-led rentals, co-living offers a popular solution to those wanting to save money and experience a sense of community. Travelers will save significant money by choosing co-living spaces over traditional hotels. In addition to offering a flexible lease agreement, co-living areas allow travelers to stay for shorter periods than traditional leases.
Travelers can bond over shared interests and activities in co-living spaces because communal spaces promote social interaction. We sat down with Gravity Co-Living CEO & Co-Founder Riccardo Tessaro.
Riccardo: Since opening our first property back in 2019, Gravity Co has focused on creating unique shared and co-living experiences, offering modern, adaptable living spaces with one principal feature at its core. Community. With our primary focus to build and nurture a physical community that embraces positive social connections, we have successfully created a fluid member-focused living experience that continues to grow as we scale.
The physical design of our properties, combined with flexible contracts and hassle-free living, often bring members to Gravity Co. However, the connections our members make, both within our spaces and at our events, are why they extend, refer friends and even move between properties.
The Gravity Co experience is also heavily supported by a digital layer: tools, systems, and strategies that are used to support the business, better understand the behavior of our members (enabling us to make decisions supported by data), and connect our members on a much wider scale to each other, to the team, to our partners, and to the brand.
Riccardo: At Gravity Co, we strive to make the rental experience as simple as possible. We offer flexible stay options, so our members can live with us for as little as 3 month,) only ask for one easy monthly payment, which covers both rent and all utility bills and offers a range of accommodation options from cleverly designed en-suite rooms to luxury, spacious apartments with complimentary gym access, giving our members both a healthy choice in accommodation style and also, location.
Many of our properties feature communal lounges and co-working spaces. These areas, although being a great space if you have a remote or work-from-home role, are also the primary social hubs of the property that are used for both member events and curated experiences.
Riccardo: Gravity Co’s primary digital platform, where you’ll find our members interacting online, is the Gravity App. Available on both Android and iOS for Gravity Co members only, the app is a hub of information that details our various events (where members can register their attendance), lists Gravity Co partnerships (including local businesses), offers, and discounts, and also facilitates communication between members via an instant chat feature. This platform furthermore permits members to raise maintenance requests and provides the tools that enable the Gravity Co team to update members individually, by the property, or across properties around important topics such as health, safety, and security.
Members also use the app as a feedback and suggestion platform, allowing them to voice any opinion or concern either in a private chat or in a public forum setting. Our customized back-end dashboard for the app was created by our team to help gather KPIs and data sets used for community engagement analysis and reporting. At Gravity Co, technology is used as a way to enhance member experiences and allow our team to make data-driven decisions.
Riccardo: One of the great features of our Gravity app is the interest group chat rooms. These digital spaces are designed to connect people with common interests so that they can talk about the topics they love, but furthermore arrange meet-ups, events, and activities with each other. This is great for social connection and we have member meet-ups happening every week through this app feature.
Riccardo: Gravity Co’s app plays a key role in the day-to-day running of the business. As well as giving our members the very best living experience within our properties, we also want to ensure they have the best digital experience. Within the next year, Gravity Co will be expanding to mainland Europe with plans already in motion to launch properties in Spain, France and Italy. As well as launching new properties, we will also be looking to offer the great benefits that are available to our members (access to events, partnerships, discounts etc) to those who do not live in one of our properties. This new type of membership will be predominately delivered through our app, so you can expect a lot of new features being added to it as well as a whole heap of new members.
