TravelPerk's second round of venture capital funding has
nearly tripled its first round. It also came about a year earlier than the
company expected to take in more capital, according to marketing VP Gidi
Pridor.
The booking and trip management software as a service platform,
based in Barcelona, raised $7.5 million in 2015 and announced another $21
million this week. U.K.-based Felix Capital and Berlin's Target Global led the
latest round, joined by returning investors from the first round, Spark Capital
and Sunstone, as well as by Amplo.
TravelPerk launched in 2015 to incentivize business travelers
to save money, but its discussions with travel managers revealed that the more
foundational problem lay in the booking and travel management experience,
including the incongruity of content available on corporate booking tools and
content displayed for consumers. That leads 48 percent of business travelers to book outside policy, Pridor said. "At the end of everything, there is a
traveler that has options," he said. "If you don't have the best inventory,
then you'll be out of the game because the only [users] who would remain are
the ones that have to use a tool and have no a choice in the matter."
So TravelPerk changed its focus in 2016 to building an
online travel agency for business travel and a consumerlike SaaS booking and
travel management platform. It logged contracts with content providers of all
stripes: global distribution systems Travelport and Amadeus, OTAs like
Booking.com and Expedia, metasearch company SkyScanner, and homesharing
platform Airbnb. It claims to have compiled the world's largest inventory
that's available for booking in one place, including both negotiated rates and rates
travelers would find searching on consumer channels.
TravelPerk's mobile-responsive Web-based desktop tool came out in mid-2017, and a mobile app that's still in beta came out in December. In the past 12 months booking volume by dollar has risen 1,200 percent, client companies have leapt from 50 to more than
1,000 and employees from 20 to 100, according to the company. That unexpected pace of growth, investor interest
and the fact that the company is poised to scale right away prompted TravelPerk
to accept the Series B funding now, Pridor said. The company will use the
capital to scale the business—focusing particularly on engineering, operations
and customer service—doubling the payroll to 200, including 40 new hires this
quarter.
It serves customers in 40 countries—its biggest markets are
the U.K., Germany, France and Spain—Pridor said, and plans to open offices in
four or five new countries within 18 months to serve bigger customers. The U.S.
is second or third on the list based on client headquarters locations, and Pridor
said an office there is inevitable.
The platform can serve companies of any size but still targets
small and midsize enterprises that employ 50 to 1,500 and serves as an
alternative to travel management companies. The service is free, though clients
can pay $12 per booking for TravelPerk Premium, and the company derives revenue
from commissions from content providers.
Pridor said a low commission rate is what has enabled the
company to amass such broad content. It's working on direct content from
suppliers like airlines, rail operators and hotels. It also integrates with
Expensify and has done custom integrations with other expense providers and
proprietary systems as requested by TravelPerk Premium clients. Integrations
with other expense management software and accounting software providers are
coming in the near future, he said; among the initiatives spurred by the latest
round of funding will be a "squad" of engineers dedicated to
non-inventory integrations. Eventually, the company plans to onboard other
service providers like insurance and travel risk management.
TravelPerk enables prepayment for all hotels
worldwide, serves as a single vendor for payment for all bookings, provides
instant invoices that live in a central spot for searching and filtering. Rounding
out its free core offering are itinerary management, real-time trip information like flight status, navigation to the hotel and alerts; travel policy setup in
less than three minutes; traveler/admin control of preferences and loyalty programs; multilingual, 24/7 traveler support provided by an in-house team and available in one click; and data
reporting and analytics.