Washington is the most transient large city in America and it is transient in a particular way: people arrive knowing roughly when they will leave.
An administration. A two-year rotation. A fellowship. A graduate programme. An embassy posting. A campaign. A consultancy that will move you to Chicago in eighteen months.
When you know your own end date, you invest differently. A lot of people here do not build a social life at all, because building one takes two years and they have three.
Roavi is not a tour company and you are not a guide. People pay for your time and your company -- dinner, a concert, an afternoon walking somewhere, someone to talk to. That is a real trade with a long history: platforms built on exactly this have operated across the United States for well over a decade.
What that produces
A city full of capable, well-paid, interesting people who work eleven-hour days and have nobody to eat with. They are not lonely in a sad way -- they are busy and rootless, and the weekend is a problem they have not solved.
DC is also an unusually easy city to be new in socially and an unusually hard one to get past the first layer of. Everybody is friendly, everybody is networking, and almost none of it turns into a Saturday.
What gets booked
Dinner in Shaw or on H Street. A Nationals or a Caps game. The Ethiopian food that DC does better than anywhere in the country. A Sunday at Eastern Market. A gallery afternoon at the Portrait Gallery or the Phillips, which are free and which nobody visits alone twice. Somebody's third month in the city who wants one conversation that is not about work.
Why the rates hold up here
Household incomes are high, the going-out culture is expensive, and the client base is people with more money than free time. $35-65 an hour is the normal band and the upper half is not difficult to hold if you are good company.
Evenings usually go as a block of three or four hours rather than counted by the hour.
Seasons
Less seasonal than most. There is a January intake and a late-summer wave when programmes and school years start, but the churn never really stops -- which makes this one of the steadier markets on this list.
Starting
Photo, a few sentences that sound like a person rather than a CV, your rate. Free, and about ten minutes.
"Renting a friend" in Washington
That is the phrase most people type, and it comes from RentAFriend, which has run this exact model in the United States since the late 2000s. Fifteen years of a company being paid to introduce people who want company, without a regulator ever taking an interest -- which is the clearest answer there is to anyone wondering whether this is a real thing to do.
It is the same idea here. The differences are money: RentAFriend charges you a listing fee before anyone has booked you, and Roavi does not charge you anything, take a commission, or touch the payment. We wrote the two up side by side in RentAFriend vs Roavi.
It gets searched by people who already know their leaving date and have decided not to spend the whole posting alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much can you earn?
$35-65 an hour. DC has high household incomes and an expensive going-out culture, and it is one of the stronger rate markets in the country for this.Do I need a licence?
Not for company. DC once licensed tour guides and a federal appeals court struck that down over a decade ago -- but guiding was never what this is. Being paid to spend time with someone is not regulated anywhere in the US.Who books it?
People on a posting or a term. Administrations, campaigns, embassies, consultancies, fellowships, two-year rotations, graduate programmes. A very large share of this city knows its own leaving date.Is it seasonal?
Less than most cities. There is a January influx and a late-summer arrival wave when programmes start, but the churn is constant and so is the demand.