Barcelona-based TravelPerk, a travel management platform, has announced today that it has acquired UK’s corporate travel company, Click Travel. The investment from Baupost Group, a Boston-based investment manager, provided the funds to TravelPerk for this acquisition.
Click Travel is TravelPerk’s third and largest acquisition. Prior to this, TravelPerk accelerated its growth in the US market by the integration of risk management startup Albatross in July 2020, and the acquisition of the US business travel platform NexTravel in January 2021.
About Click Travel
Based in Birmingham, UK, Click Travel was founded in 1999 by James McLean and Simon McLean. Click Travel is a travel management company that reduces the cost and complexity of business travel management through the use of technology. It provides booking services for hotels, rail, and air travel, plus also support for meetings and events.
Its tech-led solution makes it easy for businesses to enforce travel policy, control costs, and analyse their spend – in short, helping them to bring down their costs and simplify booking and management for their staff.
The company has over 2,000 business clients including Five Guys, Red Bull, and Talk Talk.
Speaking on the development, James McLean, CEO of Click Travel, says, “Click Travel and TravelPerk share the same mission: to reduce the cost and complexity of business travel for everyone involved. Combining TravelPerk’s industry-leading knowledge, technology, experience and first class customer support with our own is a powerful proposition and we can’t wait to get started.”
Aim of this acquisition
This development will see Click Travel’s UK market expertise and customer base combine with TravelPerk’s inventory and suite of products with an aim to provide a 7-star experience for business travelers during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides, TravelPerk will also absorb Click Travel’s team of 150 employees, its technology, and its customer base.
According to TravelPerk, even during the pandemic the company continued to scale and grow and didn’t involve any layoffs, unlike many other businesses in the sector.
On this development, Avi Meir, CEO and co-founder of TravelPerk, says, “Click Travel’s team will help us build long term growth and significantly expand our on-the-ground team in the UK. We’re now not just the dominant player in the UK, we’re the leading travel management platform for SMBs globally and the only major travel platform keeping a laser focus on the tech-driven solutions that will stand the test of time.”
Meir adds, “There is no doubt that the business travel market is on track for a full recovery after the disruption of the last year. The meetings that matter will always happen in person and we are already seeing plenty of green shoots in our key markets.”
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.
Some of its clients include TransferWise, Revolut, Monzo, Farfetch, and the US rugby association.
The company is backed by investors like DST, Kinnevik, Target Global, Felix Capital, Greyhound Capital, Spark Capital, Heartcore, LocalGlobe, Amplo, and 14W.
Here’s what TravelPerk’s been upto
Earlier in May 2021, the company raised €131.9M in its Series D funding, taking the total amount raised to $294M, to date. The raised capital enabled TravelPerk to focus on its growth in the US and Europe.
Besides, it also helped the company further develop its innovative solutions for travel such as GreenPerk, a sustainability solution which lets companies offset 100 per cent of their business travel carbon emissions and provide real-time, actionable information on their company’s carbon impact; FlexiPerk, the industry-first flexible booking tool that manages last-minute cancellations and guarantees 80 per cent of the trip refunded.
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.