After racking up more than $450 million in venture funding during the past two years, TripActions has landed what it described as its first-ever "strategic investor," Lufthansa Group, cementing a planned "extensive" business partnership between the travel management provider and the European air giant.
The investment—the terms of which were not disclosed—was made through Lufthansa's Innovation Hub, the travel startup incubator it launched in 2014, and follows recent collaboration between the companies to offer Lufthansa New Distribution Capability inventory through TripActions' platform. (Prior to that deal, TripActions accessed Lufthansa content through global distribution systems—bookings for which the carrier imposed a €16 distribution cost charge.) The cooperation between the companies will deepen under the new equity partnership, which will facilitate joint efforts around ancillary retailing, products and servicing, the firms said.
The investment also represents an expansion of TripActions' presence in the European market, where it already supports some 150 client companies from offices in London and Amsterdam, according to the company. Adding Lufthansa as a partner bolsters TripActions' ability to serve those clients, while boosting its ongoing efforts to scale up to service enterprise-level corporate customers, the travel management specialist said.
The Lufthansa investment is the second piece of significant financial news for TripActions this week, following the company's hiring of Carlos Delatorre as its chief revenue officer. TripActions in December named Thomas Tuchscherer as its first-ever chief financial officer.