Barcelona-based enterprise journey administration platform TravelPerk has raised $200 million at a hefty $2.7 billion valuation — nearly double the $1.4 billion valuation at its earlier fundraise final yr.
Alongside the increase, TravelPerk additionally introduced it has acquired Swiss startup Yokoy to deliver native bills administration into the fray.
With the journey and tourism business nearly again to pre-pandemic ranges, this has proved a boon for startups providing every little thing from tour packages and trip-planning instruments, to baggage storage and trip rental smarts.
This development has been mirrored considerably within the company sphere, too, with the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) noting that enterprise journey was on track to hit a document $1.5 trillion in 2024 — 6.2% greater than the pre-pandemic peak in 2019. This demand is filtering down into the company journey startup house, too, and buyers are taking notice. In September, information emerged that Denver-based Engine, which focuses on lodge bookings, flights, automobile leases, and assembly areas, had raised $140 million at a $2.1 billion valuation.
TravelPerk, for its half, touts an all-in-one platform for companies to guide, handle and report all their home and worldwide journey, with integrations that reach the platform to features comparable to HR and bills.
While the pandemic has had an indelible influence on working tradition by way of distant and hybrid-working, there’s little correlation between this and the the form of company journey that TravelPerk is anxious with. TravelPerk president and chief working officer, Jean-Christophe Taunay-Bucalo, pointed to its latest Value of Business Travel report, which discovered that firms are nonetheless planning to spend money on journey to spice up gross sales and new enterprise efforts, comparable to by touring to conferences.
“Hybrid and distant working fashions have had a minimal influence on demand for enterprise journey — those that are travelling for work will proceed to take action, as a result of it’s a part of their job,” Taunay-Bucalo instructed TechCrunch over e mail. “Whether it’s for a gross sales assembly or to put in a wind turbine, there are a lot of conditions the place staff have to be on the bottom and in individual.”
However, a extra distributed workforce does imply that firms are investing extra in offsites, which require journey. And TravelPerk sees this decentralization as an ideal alternative to will get its know-how into the arms of extra individuals.
“Decentralised journey programs empower workers to handle their very own bookings, and whereas prior to now that meant a scarcity of management over bills and compliance, instruments constructed into our platform give management and visibility again to the enterprise by offering oversight with out burdening journey managers with logistical complexities,” Taunay-Bucalo mentioned.
“Unified journey and expense”
Founded in 2015, TravelPerk had beforehand raised round $660 million in fairness and debt capital, and with one other $200 million within the financial institution, the corporate mentioned it’s now doubling down on its world progress plans. This consists of the U.S. market, the place it acquired Chicago-based rival Amtrav final yr with help from $135 million in debt financing.
But these progress efforts additionally embrace increasing into tangential verticals. Among TravelPerk’s present integrations is Yokoy, an AI-enabled spend administration platform backed by Sequoia Capital. And as a part of its Series E funding announcement Monday, TravelPerk mentioned it’s now buying Yokoy outright for an undisclosed sum — although TechCrunch is instructed that it was a “9 determine” transaction, which is smart provided that Yokoy had raised round $107 million since its inception in 2019.
This will permit TravelPerk to supply a “deeper and extra unified journey and expense providing,” with bills baked natively into its core platform reasonably than relying solely on third-party integrations.
“Our focus has by no means been stronger as we increase throughout core markets, speed up progress within the U.S., and now work to grow to be the primary journey and expense administration platform,” TravelPerk co-founder and CEO Avi Meir (pictured above) mentioned in an announcement.
This mirrors strikes elsewhere within the tech realm. For instance, TripActions expanded into bills administration again in 2020 in response to a pandemic that put most firms’ journey plans on long-term hiatus. Ramp, in the meantime, moved in the other way in 2022, including journey administration to its present bills product.
Expanding into bills makes an excessive amount of sense, because it future-proofs in opposition to no matter headwinds the journey sector faces right now and sooner or later. Indeed, bills is one thing that each one companies must cope with, no matter their place on company journey.
As a results of the transaction, Yokoy’s staff, together with CEO Philippe Sahli and CTO Devis Lussi, will be a part of TravelPerk, the place they may set about integrating their respective merchandise.
“Our partnership with Yokoy has already been a fantastic success, and we’re excited to take it to the subsequent stage by welcoming Phil, Devis, and the remainder of the staff to TravelPerk,” Meir mentioned. “We share a typical imaginative and prescient for the function of AI reshaping the way forward for journey and expense administration, and the innovation popping out of Yokoy’s AI labs in Zurich is significantly spectacular.”
TravelPerk’s Series E spherical was led by European enterprise capital agency Atomico, with participation from EQT Growth, Noteus Partners, Kinnevik, General Catalyst, amongst different present buyers.
