There’s a new app in town becoming super popular called Clubhouse. Currently in beta testing, it has opened its doors to creatives, travelers, celebrities and many more by invite only.
One of the rooms that have become an overnight hit is #CHSpeedDating “Find Your Future Travel Bae”. Travel Noire sat down with the CEO of Roaming Republic, Cassy Isabella, to get all the details.
Travel Noire: Tell me about Roaming Republic?
Cassy: The Roaming Republic is a travel company! I host group trips from people all over the world, for people who come from all over the world.
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Travel Noire: How did this start? It’s a huge travel group now but where did you begin?
Cassy: It started out with me and my friend Cedric we collaborated on a group trip to Thailand, which wasn’t even a company yet. At the time I was hosting travel meetups for black travelers locally in a few states that I travelled into. Thailand went so well that after 2 weeks of coming back from the trip, we planned the second trip which sold out in less than 24 hours.
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Travel Noire: How did you come up with this idea of Travel Speed Dating on Clubhouse #CHSpeedDating?
Cassy: It actually started out on Instagram Live. I first created it while we all were on lockdown. I wanted to engage the Roaming Republic community online since we weren’t able to meet in person. I reached out to 10 women and 10 men in the roaming community to essentially vet them to see if they could be matched up as potential travel baes or dating partners. It was very well received, and then came Clubhouse!
Ayanna, one of the moderators, approached me to moderate a room with her and I suggested we host the chat in the Roaming Republic Club (which I still was waiting to get approved at the time). Shel was also a moderator of this room. The room was called “Wandering While Black”. We were vibing really well together so I pitched them Travel Speed Dating to Clubhouse.
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Travel Noire: How did it go?
Cassy: It went better than I even imagined, we had over 300 people in the room & it ran over 6 hours! Then, we did a part 2 the next day, this time we incorporated Twitter by adding the hashtag, #CHSpeedDating. That way people could join the conversation that were in the audience or had something to add. We trended on Twitter–it was just a HIT!
Travel Noire: Has there been any success? Have people actually found their travel bae’s or started to date from the room?
Cassy: Yes! One of my friends actually has been talking daily to one of the contestants. I am not sure if you remember the contestant we call “Sugar Daddy”.
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Travel Noire What’s next for travel speed dating?
Cassy: With Speed dating we have been talking about expanding it to outside of Clubhouse. I would love to run it on Clubhouse as well as Zoom or Instagram Live at the same time. There are a lot of “roamers” (the nickname for the people in roaming republic) who aren’t on Clubhouse. Because of Clubhouse, so many people have said Cassy you should start a podcast.
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Cassy: It’s not something I ever considered before, but now it’s something I definitely want to tap into probably by the beginning of the next year.