Berlin-based startup offering personalised itineraries worldwide, trip.me, announced yesterday that they have received Series A funding from Recruit Holdings’ RGIP Fund. The funding follows impressive growth in bookings since the company’s birth in 2013.
trip.me currently offers connections to trip planners in over 40 countries through more than 130 local travel agents on the platform and it seeks to disrupt the current travel market by connecting travelers directly to the local travel agencies around the world. Therefore, the funding will be used to continue expansion in German and English-language markets, with expansion into other languages expected to come at a later stage of investment.
Kazumasa Watanabe, CEO of RGIP, says: “We’ve been looking to become involved in the startup scene in Berlin, Germany for a while now. We were looking to add to our portfolio of highly innovative, disruptive travel companies; trip.me fits this description perfectly. They’re offering people a better deal and putting them in control of their travel experiences. We’re confident that this is the way forward in the personalised travel market.”
CEO and Founder, Andre Kiwitz, is confident that this model is the way forward: “Traditional tour operators are out of date. We want to offer our customers a better service by allowing them to craft their own trips and travel the way they want, with the help of local, destination-based travel agencies who really know their own country and regions. By being connected directly and avoiding unnecessary middlemen, our customers stand to save up to 30%.”
During beta testing, trip.me has seen that customer satisfaction levels are indeed extremely high; the company has achieved record levels of revenue in the past few months. For Recruit Holdings, based in Tokyo, this growth is important and the investors identify the potential of trip.me’s model as one of the major factors in their decision to invest in the company.
