Spain’s latest unicorn: TravelPerk raises €101.2M at €1.14B valuation

Barcelona-based TravelPerk, a travel management platform, announced on Wednesday that it has raised an additional $115M (approx €101.2M) in its Series D round of funding. This comes after the company raised $160M (then €131.9M) in April 2021.

The company has raised a total of $409M (approx €360M) in funding to date and has now achieved the status of a unicorn with a valuation of $1.3B (approx €1.14B).

Investors in this round

The additional funding was led by new investor General Catalyst and existing investor Kinnevik.

Gillian Tans, ex-Chairwoman and CEO of Booking.com, who invested personally in this round, is joining the board of directors alongside Joel Cutler, an early investor in Stripe, Airbnb, and Kayak. Tans and Cutler will help the company to further strengthen its position in the $600B SMB travel industry.

Speaking on the development, Tans says, “TravelPerk has solidified its leadership position over the last two years in challenging times for the travel industry, emerging stronger than ever. They are innovative and have been able to anticipate and address their customers’ changing needs through major acquisitions, new market entries, and product designs. I’m here to help the company reach a global leadership position.”

Capital utilisation

TravelPerk is working towards providing people with meaningful in-person human connections in a time when flexibility and sustainability are non-negotiable for both employees and leaders.

The raised capital will be used by the company to double down on its efforts in the development of next-generation sustainable travel solutions, made specifically for the hybrid working era.

TravelPerk CEO Avi Meir says, “As time goes by, it is clear that there won’t be a replacement for the human touch. We are seeing data on our platform and we are feeling it ourselves. While some technologies are focused on virtual interactions, TravelPerk is building the technology that will help us get together in real life.”

The raised capital will also be used to support the expansion in TravelPerk’s target markets, including the US and Europe, where it has witnessed 4X growth since 2019 in terms of annualised revenue as well as doubled its customer acquisition rate.

Business travel management made easy

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

The platform allows travellers to 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 spending.

Some of the company’s clients include TransferWise, Revolut, Monzo, Farfetch, and the US rugby association.

Here’s what TravelPerk’s been upto

Recently, the company released TravelPerk Events, a tool that helps distributed teams come together face-to-face. TravelPerk will continue to develop this product offering going forward in 2022.

In an effort to make in-person meetings as sustainable as possible, TravelPerk is also offering customers the ability to calculate their carbon footprint and offset their emissions through its acquisition of Susterra in 2021.

Avi Meir, says, “The last two years have changed the travel industry forever, but one thing will always remain true: we have a human need to connect and meet with each other. Businesses will always need to travel, to bring their teams together and to meet with customers. But they need that travel to be flexible, convenient and, more than ever, they need it to be sustainable.”

In 2021, the company acquired Click Travel, the UK’s corporate travel platform, and expanded its US presence with the acquisition of NexTravel. It also opened its office in Miami last October.