Travel and hospitality are naturally in Miami’s DNA. As a catalyst in the entertainment, food and beverage and overall hospitality industry, some of the most impressive endeavors come out of the Magic City.
After working in the local hospitality scene for the entirety of their careers, Jason Van Esso, Jordan Scheffler and Zach Picon noticed a loophole that they set themselves on a mission to fix. Together, the three of them founded Crewfare, a business with the goal of making the hospitality industry seamless, from the attendees to partners.
Crewfare works alongside events to create fully customizable travel plans for attendees, sponsors, artists, VIPs and more. The brand is working with mecca’s in the industry including Rolling Loud, Ultra Music Festival, The Governors Ball, Preakness, Palm Tree Music Festival and so much more to create the ultimate experience.
We caught up with all three founders to talk about the Crewfare experience and the Miami hospitality scene.
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All three of you come from different backgrounds in the hospitality industry, how do each of you utilize your previous experience within your work at Crewfare?
Jason: All three of us have worked in the event production space - whether it be music festivals, sporting events or VIP experiences - so we know how challenging it can be to pull off a successful event. Between staff, attendees, sponsors, artists, VIPs and more, sorting travel becomes a full-time job. With everything else an event producer faces, there’s just no time to properly execute on a travel plan. So, unlike your traditional travel agency, we come in as experts in the travel space with a deep understanding of what goes into producing large events. Not to mention, we view ourselves as a consumer-first business, and ensure every guest who books with us receives the best travel experience possible. This allows us to take the burden off of our partners while maintaining the curated experience they’ve worked so hard to create.
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Being native Miami founders, how do you think growing up around such a hospitality-driven city shaped your interest?
Zach: We all ended up in Miami because of our interest in hospitality. All three of us went to the University of Miami to pursue different areas of it. Jordan because of music, me for hospitality, and Jason…well Jason actually studied biomedical engineering but ended up producing some of the top destination trips! Being a tourism hub, Miami has shown us how ripe the group travel space is for innovation, and it has connected us with the right people and partners to make it happen. Supporting events is a focus of ours but revolutionizing the group travel experience as a whole is our mission. In merging our collective experience, we understand what it takes to create the technology and experiences to do so. We’re going to continue to grow our business in Miami and hire locally to do just that.
What separates you from other event, travel and planning platforms?
Jordan: In the travel space, there aren’t platforms out there that utilize the same next-gen technology that we do. Rather than build our software out as a traditional booking platform, we look at it like a ticketing company. We want to offer our guests the same ease of use that they can expect in booking a ticket to see their favorite artist. When our customers go to book a hotel, they have the option to secure it for a small deposit and pay over time, split the cost with their friends at checkout to avoid reconciling and transferring money later, join waitlists to get first priority at sold out hotels for when space becomes available, and book extras like merchandise and shuttle passes along the way. Plus, we offer 24/7 live phone, chat, and email support, self-service abilities for guests to make changes to their reservations, interactive maps to help customers visualize and understand their proximity to the event, and private booking options to give priority customers first access to special deals. We want our system to not only help existing attendees get to their destination, but support ticket sales by making the travel experience so simple.
And if you ask our partners, it’s also about who we are. When our partners sign on with Crewfare they know that they never have to think about travel again. We handle the process from A-Z. They have no risk, no worries, and collect additional revenue through it all.
How are your partners curated? Do you have a dream partner?
Zach: Any major event with 50,000+ attendees has a significant portion traveling in, so that’s what we’re looking for. Our philosophy is quality over quantity. We want to work with the biggest events in music, sports, conventions, fashion, culinary, art and more. Our dream clients are events that excite us: Jason loves the NHL, I’m an F1 fanatic, and Jordan just wants an artist pass at Coachella.
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What can we expect next?
Jason: You can expect Crewfare to continue innovating in the group travel space. We’re continuing to build new features and technology to make it easier for people to travel to their favorite experience and destinations and explore new ones.
Photography by: Courtesy Crewfare, Brandon Erlinger-Ford Unsplash
