To accelerate its expansion plans, surprise online travel agency srprs.me has recently completed a successful crowdfunding campaign! Founder and CEO Raymond Klompsma raised just close to €900,000 at the time of writing, that was way above the original target of €700,000 reportedly.
The company will be using its growth capital to increase its market share, automate the systems and make the supply more sustainable. Notably, at the moment all trips are still booked by hand, a job of about one hour per customer.
Srprs.me: Sustainable travelling!
While travelling has a negative impact on the environment, especially now, srprs.me want to make passengers aware of their footprint and invest in a product to make it more sustainable. With a part of the raised money, he wants to offer new sustainable products, such as eco-friendly accommodation, train travel and travelling by the electric car. He also suggests encouraging travellers to compensate their CO2 emissions for a complete journey.
So far, 489 individuals have entrusted their money to Srprs.me. They do this by means of convertible loans on crowdfunding platform Oneplanetcrowd, with an interest rate of 7 per cent and a term of 58 months.
“We are extremely proud that more than 480 investors support us in our mission to bring open-mindedness back into a world where we take our responsibility.”
Expansion plans for The Netherlands, Belgium and UK
On the other hand, Klompsma wants to bring certain open-mindedness to the travel industry. In the past four years, the company has served more than 90,000 travellers with ‘traveller’s satisfaction’ of 8.7. The travel tech startup is planning to grow its presence in the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom once the next goal of 2 million is reached.
At the moment the Amsterdam-based startup is still loss-making, which seems to be quite normal for a startup that wants to scale up. For 2018 Srprs.me expect to arrive at a net loss of almost €1.5 million. Also, by automating — among other things — work and increasing the number of bookings, Srprs.me expect to write off black numbers for the first time next year.
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