Tour Operator Context Nets $5 Million in Funding for Its Task of Scaling
Photo Credit: The Sagrada Família. the emblematic Barcelona church of the late Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, is the kind of engineering and cultural work that Context Travel tries to unravel for its guests. Context Travel
Skift Take
Context is a scholarly tour business betting that digital marketing will let it replicate its model profitably worldwide. Other experiential tour businesses will watch with a skeptical (but hopeful) eye.
Lots of small travel companies get relatively small amounts of fundings. By that measure, news that Context Travel, a provider of walking tours and activities based in Philadelphia, took in a $5 million in investment from a private equity firm isn't that remarkable.
But the deal becomes more notable when it is seen as being representative of something a bit larger: Many travel companies are wrestling with how to meet the demand for a curated selection of experience-heavy travel at scale.
It is easy for travel industry types to quote surveys suggesting that more people -- especially luxury travelers and millennials -- prefer experiential travel over checklist or package tourism. There's a similarity to how to these middle- and upper-income people tend to buy travel instead of physical goods.
It's also easy to point to a growing demand for educational experiences, from the doubling of museums in the past couple of decades to the explosion of niche, skill-oriented workshops like
