RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – To operate in Brazil’s main tourist destination, Rio de Janeiro always seemed a natural step for Mexican lodging startup Casai. With an alternative lodging proposal to hotels and Airbnb, the company has opened units in Ipanema and Copacabana.
In São Paulo for over a year, the company was waiting for the right time to penetrate the Marvelous City and try to conquer both leisure and business tourists with its alternative lodging proposal.
The time has come in this first week of July: the company started its expansion launching five units in the iconic neighborhoods of Ipanema and Copacabana.
“Rio has travelers who combine pleasure and business in a single trip, a trend the pandemic has intensified with the so-called digital nomads, and that we at Casai were born to meet,” the Brazilian operation’s director Luiz Eduardo Mazetto said to EXAME.
Founded by Nico Barawid and María del Carmen Herrerías Salazar, the startup created a middle ground service between a hotel and an Airbnb apartment, blending the cozy feel of home with hotel standards of quality and services.
The business concept came from Barawid’s international trips for work. Often away from home, the young man missed a hospitality service model that guaranteed minimum quality standards, such as high-speed Wi-Fi, without having to resort to large hotel chains. In 2019, the duo launched Casai’s first units in Mexico City.
The startup adopts a property management model. The available properties for stays are handpicked by the company’s team, which renovates and decorates the spaces. For guests, the experience is very similar to renting a property on Airbnb, with the difference that they can request services from the company’s partner suppliers.
In pandemic times this includes assistance should they need help with food, cleaning, or even Covid-19 testing.
With over R$300 (US$59) million seed capital raised from funds such as Monashees Capital, Kaszek Ventures, and Andreessen Horowitz, the company is investing R$100 million in Brazil. In São Paulo, it currently manages more than 100 properties in upscale neighborhoods such as Vila Olímpia, Pinheiros, Jardins, and Itaim Bibi.
The company’s goal is to close the year with a portfolio 6 times larger and to take the lodging service to other important tourist destinations, such as Florianópolis and Búzios.
“In Rio, our focus is to meet the current demand for domestic tourism and digital nomads, but we see good opportunities with the advance of vaccination and the resumption of international tourism,” Mazetto says to EXAME.
Source: exame