Blog

Barcelona-based TravelPerk, a travel management platform, has raised $160M (approx €131.9M) in its Series D equity and debt round funding. The company has now raised a total of $294M (approx €M) in funding to date.

The round was led by Greyhound Capital, with participation from existing investors. The company is backed by investors like Kinnevik, Target Global, Felix Capital, Spark Capital, Heartcore, LocalGlobe, Amplo, and 14W.

Utilisation of funds

The raised capital will enable TravelPerk to focus on its growth in the US and Europe and on product innovations designed for the changing needs of travellers and SMEs post-pandemic.

Speaking on the development, Avi Meir, CEO & co-founder of TravelPerk, says, “There will always be a need for business travel. But the events of the last year have fundamentally changed businesses’ expectations and preferences.”

He further adds, “Over the last 12 months, we’ve been constantly innovating to address the changing needs for travellers navigating the complex travel environment during COVID, and kept growing as a company during one of the worst crises the industry has ever seen – doubling our travel budget under management in this period.”

With the impact from the pandemic, TravelPerk feels flexibility, safety, and sustainability are the most important than that needs to be taken care of on priority. Hence, TravelPerk will be focused on enhancing its offerings in these areas through innovation and acquisitions.

Besides, the company is also “hiring heavily”. After not making any layoffs during the pandemic, it expects to grow its 500 people team as the travel market grows through late 2021 and 2022.

Business travel management made easy

Founded by Avi Meir, Javier Suarez, and Ron Levin in 2015, TravelPerk is a business travel platform that aims to combine the best of business and leisure travel to provide its customers with a platform for booking, managing, and reporting business trips, using its proprietary technology.

The TravelPerk platform allows travellers to seamlessly compare, book, and invoice trains, cars, flights, hotels, and apartments from a range of providers including Kayak, Skyscanner, Expedia, Booking.com, and Airbnb. By doing so, the company believes it offers business travellers unparalleled freedom and flexibility while providing companies with control over their travel spend.

Recent developments

The current funding round is another milestone for TravelPerk after a year that has seen the company launch new solutions for travel in a COVID and post-COVID world. 

In October 2020, TravelPerk launched the company’s first standalone service, TravelSafe API. The company’s API allows any travel provider to supply its customers with real-time insights on COVID-19 travel restrictions, including point-to-point travel information, travel documents, local transmission levels, local guidelines, airline safety measures, and more.

Back in July 2020, the company made its first-ever acquisition of Albatross, a risk management startup that offers an API for structured information on travel restrictions and local guidelines to travel applications.

And, earlier this January, the company acquired its US-based competitor NexTravel with an aim to expand its US presence. The company took over NexTravel’s customer base, employees, technology, inventory, and US market expertise.

TravelPerk also continued to improve and future-proof existing products such as FlexiPerk, the industry-first flexible booking tool that manages last-minute cancellations and guarantees 80 per cent of the trip refunded.