This dating concierge site promises you ‘hassle-free romance’

Have you heard that joke about a couple before and after they got married? When they are dating, the guy always bends over backwards to bring the girl out for a good time. After marriage, he instead brings home a six-pack, and says “What are you going to drink?” A quick search on Google will bring up (sadly) many more for your viewing pleasure.

It’s a common complaint: as a couple starts to add more years to their relationship, somehow the quality of their dates tends to dip as well, giving rise to the term ‘honeymoon period’ to describe those good ol’ pre-marriage days. Tanuja Rajah, co-founder of the Malaysia-based date concierge site LoveSprk, noticed that as her friends and cousins moved from dating to marriage, they began putting less effort in their relationships.

Rajah doesn’t blame them. “Long work hours, increasing financial commitments, household chores and children – these all take up time and zap energy. And planning an amazing date takes time and effort,” she says. Being the person that people always go to for ideas on how to have a good time, she had the idea to channel this ‘power’ of hers into helping couples with their relationships:

It occurred to me that people want to go out and try new things. It’s just that they don’t always know where to go or what to do. Plus researching, planning and organizing are all too much work. That’s when the idea for Lovesprk was born.

Lovesprk was launched today through a partnership with Korea-based couples app Between. Through Lovesprk, couples have access to an array of fully packaged date ideas, ranging from luxurious to fun to quirky. According to an official statement, the service takes care of all the details, from planning to making reservations, and provides the option for add-ons such as bouquets of flowers, a specially-picked gift, or even a chauffeur-driven limousine for the night.

In a phrase, they call it “hassle-free romance”.

Is ‘hassle-free romance’ really romance?

This might seem like a great idea at first, but does it take the romance out of planning a date? After all, it truly is the thought that counts – if no effort is put in, can it be really called ‘romance’? Rajah believes so:

In an ideal world, we’d all have the time and mental real estate to plan romantic night outs. But the truth is that this isn’t happening much. Lovesprk wants to change that. We’re just changing the method – not the end result. And the end result is that more couples will be heading out, creating new memories and building stronger relationships.

She uses the example of when emails were first introduced to the world. “Many argued against it, saying it was nothing compared to handwritten letters – that it wasn’t personal enough. But emails simply changed the way we communicated,” she adds.

Lovesprk earns by receiving a commission from each ‘date experience’ purchased. Their concierge service – which couples can choose “to enhance an existing pre-planned date, or to create a bespoke date from scratch with the help of Date Consultants” – comes at an additional cost, explains Rajah.

They have received an undisclosed amount of funding from Start Up Nation after participating in the MAD-SUN Business Challenge 2.0 held in January 2014, and are focusing on reaching out to more couples within Malaysia now. Their efforts will be greatly accelerated by their partnership with Between, which will give them access to all current users of the couples app in Malaysia.