Social Travel Start-up Creates Consumer Conduit for Booking Group Tours
Vienna, AUSTRIA - TourRadar, a website with the world’s largest inventory of multi-day tour products and a market-leading multi-channel distribution platform, announced today that it has closed a strategic funding round that will enable TourRadar to build-out booking capabilities on top of its Marketplace and its existing suite of social applications for Facebook and Mobile.
Funding came from well-known travel executives, including Erik Blachford (former CEO of Expedia) and Jörg Trouvain (former CEO of HolidayCheck, the leading European hotel review platform and a leading OTA in Germany).
Other investors participating in this round include Christoph Prinz (exited f:wz aviation software to Sabre Airline Solutions), Markus Wagner (i5invest incubator, Vienna) and Speed Invest (a €10m Super-Angel fund based out of Vienna). Erik Blachford, Jörg Trouvain and Speed Invest's Daniel Keiper-Knorr will join Sebastian Heinzel (founder of social travel guide tripwolf) on TourRadar’s Advisory Board.
“The $89b tour industry needs a consumer website where travellers can research, choose and book tours from hundreds of operators from all over the world,” said Travis Pittman, co-founder and CEO of TourRadar. “This funding will enable TourRadar to become the pre-eminent online marketer of multi-day trips. With our mix of tour information, user reviews, social messaging and e-commerce we offer travellers the best way to find and book their perfect tour.”
TourRadar, founded in 2010, is a marketplace for travellers to compare multi-day tours from different tour operators and book their trip, such as an African safari, a trek to Machu Picchu, or a bus tour through Europe, all on one site. TourRadar works directly with over 500 tour operators across the globe, offering some 20,000 tours in 220 countries.
In addition to its website, TourRadar hosts an array of affiliate partnerships and a suite of Facebook and Mobile applications designed to assist the consumer’s travel research and purchasing experience. TourRadar’s “Meet Others”, an app that allows travellers going on the same trip to get in touch with each other before their tour starts, is already being used by hundreds of tour operators. To date TourRadar has facilitated almost 50,000 conversations of travellers asking each other for advice on a specific tour or getting excited together about their upcoming adventure.