Culture Trip Struggles to Justify Massive Investment
Skift Take
We get it, startups often have to accept substantial losses in order to quickly expand a particular business. But given the size of Culture Trip's revenue and the market in which it operates, it's difficult to see why investors have pumped more than $100 million into the business.
After taking in $102 million in funding you’d assume that travel media website Culture Trip would be well on the way to building a substantial business, but that’s not the case — at least according to its most recent set of consolidated company accounts.
In the year to the end of September 2018, The Culture Trip Ltd generated only $659,000 (£515,000) in revenue — a 44 percent improvement on the previous year’s total. Despite the growth, that figure that seems hard to square with its lofty external backing. Unsurprisingly, given its ambitions, the business also posted a substantial loss of $30.3 million (£23.9 million) a 159 percent increase versus 2017. “The increase in losses arising in the year is the result of the group’s continued investment in its product, technology, content, sales, and marketing teams, and t