Arrives a new to the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem: the Spanish TravelPerk has reached a valuation of 1,300 million dollars (around 1,100 million euros) after closing its last investment round in which it obtained 115 million dollars (just over 100 million euros). This figure places the online business travel agency in the noble class of the startup ecosystem, along with other Spanish unicorns such as Wallbox.
The latest investment of the Spanish TravelPerk was led by General Catalyst and its current investor Kinnevik, while the former president and CEO of Booking, Gillian Tans, has invested in this round, so will join the board of directors along with Joel Cutler, one of the early investors in Stripe and Kayak. With these funds the company will seek double its efforts to develop sustainable travel solutions for SMEs.
“We are investing heavily in green travel technology by building on our existing product and acquiring companies like Susterra. We want to take our sustainability experience to the next level and make sure that when people come together face-to-face, they don’t do so at the expense of our planet.” assured the company in
Also, the resources of this investment will serve TravelPerk to promote its expansion in the United States and Europe.
Twelve months of success for TravelPerk
Of course, this is the result of a great career. Six years ago Javier Suarez and Avi Meir, two former employees of Booking, decided to use their knowledge in relation to online travel agencies, but focusing them towards corporate travel in order to attack an obvious problem: create specific solutions for companies in relation to their trips.
and to date, the Spanish Travelperk has raised around 340 million euros in its company, and from 20 employees it has managed to grow to 600 employees. Its headquarters are in Barcelona, where more than 400 professionals work, but it also has offices in London, Birmingham, Berlin, Chicago and Miami.
But the latter has not been the only one that has recently closed: in April 2021 Travelperk received €132 million in a Series D funding round, led by the British fund Greyhound Capital. This was a great achievement for a company that had not made a profit mainly because The pandemic has hit the travel sector particularly hard. Despite the fact that the coronavirus continues to affect parts of Europe and the United States, its two main markets, the bet is optimistic.
Despite the confinement, the bet in the travel sector is optimistic
And it is that what was the typical business trip prior to Covid-19 in recent months has been transformed into a call via Zoom, while previous conferences have become electronic and even group conversations on Slack and even via WhatsApp, actions that have not changed as the lockdown has been lifted, as businesses and workers have been able to adapt to a growing variety of digital communication tools.
In fact, Travelperk with a drop in its turnover of 40%, from 140 to 84 million euros, but despite this the company and its investors are willing to bet that business trips will continue to recover over time and the plan is to be ready to meet the demand for business travel.
“Travel is definitely coming back.”, during the last round of investment. “We can confirm it with numbers. In the United States, for example, we can see a recovery of 70% to 75% on domestic flights compared to the pre-Covid-19 baseline.”
Now with the new omicron variant the future is still uncertain, however it is true that physical meetings have become more relevant over time.
Part of the capital of its previous financing was used in: Travelperk has bought its American competitor Nextravel the British company Click Travel, as well as the Albatross risk management platformthereby fueling their own resilience efforts.
And that’s not counting the fact that October 2020, the company launched an API with which he claimed to want to help the travel industry obtain updated information on coronavirus restrictionsand at the same time, signed a partnership with Southwest Airlines to fill a key gap in its US offering.
The bet is green travel technology
Mier emphasized how Travelperk managed to double its customer base in 2020, while the company claims that since 2019 it has quadrupled its annualized revenue.
Since last year, the company’s focus is “flexibility, security and sustainability” that will be more important than ever for business travelers, according to Mier.
“Flexibility because the trips still have a lot of friction due to the different restrictions, with which the trips could be canceled in a short time, security, so that each traveler knows not only the specific health requirements in their destination, but also they will receive updates in time real if something changes. Sustainability because in this period companies have taken stock, realizing that we all have to do more in terms of environmental impact, and of course travel is a big part of it”, Mier assured.
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