The Stockholm-based travel startup Triple has just secured $500K in seed funding from Spotify veterans to scale its travel experience marketplace. Founded in 2016, Triple is a marketplace where passionate and outgoing individuals can organise their own activities, and earn money by acting as hosts in their hometowns; showcasing their personal and unique experiences ‘off the beaten path’. Hosts share their passion or craft, and connect through the platform with travelers to give them a taste of the city they live in through the eyes of a local.
Active currently in Stockholm, Paris, Barcelona and London, and since their official launch in May 2017, Triple is already generating revenue of over $15,000 per month. This seed investment will be used to fuel growth into more major cities in the next year. Triple’s biggest competitor is GetYourGuide from Berlin. A company which is the European leader in the “travel experience” market.
Joakim Grönvall, the CEO of Triple stated: “People spent $39 billion on tours and activities in 2015. This market is still very old-school with a lot of middlemen. We want to give locals and guides a way of reaching travelers and giving them a more personal and memorable experience through Triple. By adding reviews as an important part of the experience, particularly on each individual host, we allow them to compete with their skills, instead of just availability and price.”
“The best experiences we’ve had ourselves when visiting new places, are when we got to spend time with locals at our destination. With Triple, we’re offering travelers that authentic experience that would otherwise be drowned out in the noise.” said Triple Co-founder Petri Määttä.
Among the new shareholders are Andreas Ehn (former CTO at Spotify) and Lisa Enckell (co-founder of Wrapp), while Spotify veteran Jonathan Forster (including the CEO of Spotify in Sweden and Europe) are among the investors.