Skift Travel News Blog

The conventional wisdom back in 2015 was that travel agencies were a shrinking business. But that year, Spanish entrepreneur David Hernández thought he saw a whitespace for creating a fast-growing travel agency business, and he launched plans to create Pangea.

Fast forward to 2022, and his “travel store” invoiced close to 50 million euros in sales, Hernandez told the Spanish publication Time on Monday. In the first quarter of 2023, Pangea doubled its revenue year-over-year. This year, it expects to generate close to $75 million (€70 million).

What factors are enabling Pangea to grow quickly, having now served more than 20,000 travelers in only a few years?

In 2019, Hernandez raised an approximately $11 million (€9 million) round of venture funding, led by led by Axon Partners. The funding helped the company survive the pandemic and open four stores: in Madrid, at 1,500 square meters; in Barcelona, at 1,700 square meters and with a restaurant; in Bilbao, with three floors; and in Valencia, in the heart of the city.

The physical stores have attracted a new generation of travelers, just as some online-first direct-to-consumer brands like eyewear maker Warby Parker have opened physical stores as a marketing technique. Pangea’s Madrid store last year had a turnover of about $35 million (€30 million). Roughly a fifth of its customers were walk-ins.

“People fill out an online questionnaire, and based on their interests and characteristics, we find the best advisor for them,” Hernández said. “We have expert professional advisors in diving, volcanoes, safaris… anything you can imagine.”

Hernández doesn’t neglect technology. But he sees it as supplemental rather than the full offering — mainly as a way to make back-end and routine processes more efficient. His services are within a rounding error of the cost of fully booking trips online but save customers time, Hernández claimed.

“We have been developing a global technological tool for a year that aims to help further digitize the sector,” Hernández said, who aims to launch the tool at the travel trade fair Fitur early next year.

“Who thinks Booking.com, to name one, has no margins?” Hernández said. “That you always find the cheapest on the internet is not always true. For a difference of five or ten euros, it is not worth giving up the after-sales service, the security, the customization that we offer… We [as travelers] don’t have enough time to spend more than 50 hours preparing a far away and complex trip, like Costa Rica, Japan, Tanzania, the USA, or the Maldives. .. In an agency, they solve it for you in 30 minutes with all the guarantees and professional advice.”

—David Hernández, CEO of Pangea

Travel technology company Travelport revealed on Friday it had received a $200 million investment from its owners, Siris Capital Group and Elliott Management. Based in Langley, UK, the privately held company didn’t disclose its financial performance other than to say it had achieved “a strong first-quarter performance.”

The investment may have partly helped Travelport to acquire Deem, the corporate travel player, as Skift reported earlier this month. Those companies didn’t disclose the price or terms of that transaction.

“The main advantage of private equity ownership is agility, which is crucial in a rapidly changing environment,” said CEO Greg Webb in a statement.

Skift recently published an interview with Webb about the company’s strategy. Travelport’s software supports travel bookings for more than 100,000 travel agents.

Via, a pioneer in transit technology, announced Thursday that it has acquired Citymapper, a UK-based premier journey planning app and transit technology company. Terms of the transactions are not disclosed.

Citymapper, which has over 50 million users in over 100 cities, provides technology for local transportation planning using a combination of walking, cycling, public transit, taxis and other available options. The platform selects the best navigation route for users based on preferred transit modes, arrival time, trip duration and cost.

Via optimizes public mobility systems by leveraging technology to build efficient, equitable, and sustainable transportation networks in over 35 countries. The company raised $110 million in February 2023 with the goal of expanding its digital infrastructure. The acquisition of Citymapper follows the company’s acquisitions of Fleetonomy in 2020 and Remix in 2021.

Citymapper will become integrated with Via’s platform to build an end-to-end technology solution for transit systems. The Citymapper app will continue to be available for its users worldwide. As part of the acquisition, transit agencies and cities will benefit from a full mobility-as-a-service (“MaaS”) solution that enables transit agency riders to plan and book journeys across multiple modes of transit informed by delays, service disruptions, and route closures. 

“We have the utmost respect for the world-class product and user experience that Azmat and his team have built,” said Daniel Ramot, Via co-founder and CEO. “By bringing our teams together, we see an exciting opportunity to deliver Citymapper’s capabilities to cities and transit agencies all over the world, so that they can create the most user-friendly and relevant transit experience for their communities.”

Roch Ventures, a €150 million ($160.2 million) fund for travel tech startups in Europe and Israel, has made its first investment. 

The Luxembourg-based fund made an investment in WeSki, a startup booking engine focused on the ski and snowboard industry. Roch Ventures is leading the round with participation from Waze founder Uri Levine, TravelPerk CEO Avi Meir, and the founders of FlixBus. The size of the investment was not disclosed. 

This is the first of what will likely be another five investments from the fund this year, said Bobby Demri, managing partner of Roch Ventures. The firm plans to invest the fund into 20 companies, focusing on seed and Series A rounds. It’s focused on the European and Israeli markets, which Demri said is filling a gap for the travel tech industry there. 

“In Europe, people are very afraid about travel investment. You will find some investing in travel, but you will never find a firm specializing in travel,” Demri said.”

Roch was founded last year by Demri and Ludger Kuebel-Sorger of Boston Consulting Group, along with executives from Six Senses, Ennismore Brand, and Air France.

The firm is focusing on what Demri believes is the next revolution in the travel and tourism sector. 

He sees opportunities around digital nomad services, sustainability, the blending of corporate and leisure travel, and tech that could remove intermediaries like global distribution systems. 

As for WeSki, he believes the opportunity lies in what he sees as a rise of niche travel services. 

“I think that the travel sector is becoming a more specialized industry,” Demri said.

Tel Aviv-based WeSki partners with 60 ski resorts in seven countries in Europe. Next, it plans to enter the U.S. market, including mom-and-pop facilities that may not have had much online presence previously. 

The platform allows users to book all facets of a ski trip, including flights, transportation, accommodations, ski lift passes, ski gear rental, and more, all according to budget, party size, and level of experience. 

WeSki said it had a 300 percent increase in revenue between 2021 and 2022 and revenue growth of 1,000 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Travelsoft, a company that offers software products focused on travel bookings, has added a third brand to its portfolio.

The Paris-based company said Monday that it acquired Spain-based Travel Compositor, a provider of travel booking engines, for an undisclosed price. 

Travel Compositor said its platforms handle €1 billion ($1.1 billion) worth of bookings annually and generate €11.5 million ($12.3 million) in revenue. The company is established in Southern Europe and is growing in Latin America and Asia.

Following the acquisition, Travelsoft said it will now transact bookings worth €5 billion ($5.3 billion) annually and generate revenue of over €35 million ($37.4 million). With 90 people joining Travelsoft via the acquisition, the company now has more than 200 employees globally. The company said it will also be able to invest over €5 million ($5.3 million) per year in research and development.

Travelsoft products are focused on helping the tourism industry sell travel packages by automating production and booking, handling data for marketing, and increasing conversion rates. The company works with 300 tour operators connected to 600 suppliers in more than 40 countries, mainly in Europe and the Americas.

Travelsoft also owns Germany-based Traffics, which it acquired in 2022, and France-based Orchestra. 

Traffics offers consulting, search, and booking systems for more than 6,000 travel agencies, as well as travel portals, airlines, hotels and travel suppliers. Orchestra said it allows travel professionals to produce, administrate, distribute, and manage travel packages on all distribution channel

Each of the three companies will maintain their names and brands.

“The need for booking platforms is growing and we see many opportunities for consolidation, so watch out for more acquisitions as we build the world’s leading travel SaaS,” said Christian Sabbagh, founder and CEO of Travelsoft, in a statement

Sabbagh remains the majority shareholder of Travelsoft, alongside the two founders of Travel Compositor and the two founders of Traffics. 

Shares in startups MOGU and Top Group Express, owned by Travel Compositor, will also join Travelsoft. 

The investors who participated in Travel Compositor’s only fundraising round in 2016 — including Caixa, Capital Risk, Inspirit (Didac Lee), Hotusa Ventures, and Venture Cap II — are fully exiting company ownership and multiplying their investment by 12 to 15 times, the company said. 

Travel technology giant Sabre said on Wednesday that Sean Menke, who has been CEO of the company since 2016, will become executive chair of its board on April 27, at which time its current president, Kurt Ekert, will become its CEO, too.

“It has been an honor and privilege to help lead Sabre over the last eight years,” Menke said. “I am proud of what our teams have accomplished and how we’ve served our customers during unprecedented times.”

Ekert joined the Southlake, Texas-based company in January 2022 as president and has since developed new growth strategies while reorganizing its largest business division. He had previously been president and CEO of the business travel management company CWT (Carlson Worldwide Travel) for five years. Ekert has also served at Continental Airlines, Cendant, and Sabre’s smaller rival Travelport.

Last week, Skift highlighted Sabre’s strategy for 2023 and beyond.

Mondee has been going through a lot of changes over the last year, and the numbers shared during its latest earnings call reflect that.

Mondee more than doubled annual gross revenue in 2022 to $2.2 billion. The company also had a net loss of $87 million in 2022, compared with $39 million in 2021, because of various one-time expenses mostly related to the way the company went public in July 2022. 

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization was $16 million in 2022, an increase of more than $20 million.

Mondee provides travel agents access to a marketplace for booking on behalf of their customers. Travel agents access that marketplace, as well as ancillary software products to manage their business, through a Mondee software platform. 

As the company continues to focus on expanding its services and geographical footprint, it projects net revenue growth of 47 percent for 2023.

About 80 percent of Mondee’s bookings are for flights, the rest comprised of hotels and car rentals. The company plans to soon expand offerings to include cruises, theaters, theme parks, sporting events, and other ticketed events. 

Historically focused on North America, Mondee is working to expand in Latin America, India, and Europe, in that order. 

Mondee earlier this year acquired Orinter, a similar company based in Brazil, for $40 million as part of its expansion to Brazil and Latin America. 

“We plan to continue aggressively executing a targeted, accretive acquisition strategy, which will help accelerate our growth and expansion into new geographies as well as offerings of new products and services,” Prasad Gundumogula, chairman and CEO of Mondee, said during the call Tuesday morning. 

Gundumogula said he believes that demand by younger generations for more tech-forward options is a significant driver of the company’s growth, and that will help mitigate headwinds like inflation, high fuel costs, and economic uncertainty. 

The Mondee stock price was at $11.29 late Tuesday morning, up 10.9 percent year to date.

Caesars Entertainment is adding an online travel agency business model, as it launches a new website that lets guests books flights as well as their accommodation.

The resort operator’s new “Caesars Rewards Travel Bundle” venture, as reported by Skift’s Daily Lodging Report, is powered by Snowstorm Technologies.

To coincide with the new Caesars website (caesars.com/flights-hotels) Snowstorm has launched new division called yourWurld. It describes it as a “turnkey packaging technology solution combined with global content and fulfillment services.”

Snowstorm now wants to target other hotel groups so it can build packaging solutions for them as well.

Caesars claims it is the first time a major domestic casino company in the U.S. has added this type of model. It’s being rolled out in Las Vegas first, before onboarding its 50 other properties in the U.S. later this year. Car rental, dining and entertainment (through Ticketmaster) will be added at a later date.

It will only sell accommodation for its own properties.

Guests can earn Caesars Rewards credits when booking packages, and redeem them at its gaming destinations or online. The company says it has 60 million Caesars Rewards members in the U.S.

Spain’s Iberia has been hit by a computer glitch, affecting its booking and boarding system.

“Due to a connectivity issue with our systems, today’s flights are experiencing delays,” it said on social media on Saturday. “We apologize to our customers and thank you for your understanding. Everyone at Iberia is working to solve it as soon as possible.”

The weekend disruption hit dozens of services across Spain and Europe, according to reports.

The software malfunction at Iberia, which is part of International Consolidated Airlines Group, is the latest in a series of computer blunders to strike the aviation industry.

The U.S. experienced a widespread shutdown of flights earlier this month, due to problems with the Federal Aviation Administration’s systems. It was forced to restore its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which alerts pilots of potential hazards.

Southwest Airlines has taken a considerable financial hit owing to issues assigning crew to flights during the Christmas vacation caused by outdated optimization technology. The airlines has pledged to spend $1 billion on technology upgrades.

Old technology is increasingly contributing to mass flight cancellations, as travel returns. In Spain, passenger numbers are also rapidly returning to pre-pandemic levels. Passenger numbers through Spanish airport operator Aena’s 46 airports in December were at 98 percent of three years earlier.

Iberia reported that it had fixed the problem on Sunday. “Our systems have regained connectivity. Online billing and check-in are back to normal. We apologize to all customers for the inconvenience caused and appreciate your understanding,” it said.

Expedia Group has announced the first group of tech companies taking part in its new Open World Accelerator program.

The 12 startups were chosen from hundreds of applicants worldwide focused on building tech products meant to improve accessibility for underserved travelers. Each startup or small business must have been founded in the last 10 years and have a minimum viable product. 

The startup participants get technology and business development support, mentorship from Expedia Group personnel and outside experts, a non-equity grant, and access to the Expedia Group platform and products. 

The accelerator was announced in September. 

“Open World Accelerator is specifically designed to drive innovation in the industry, remove barriers to travel, and enable startups and SMBs to build capabilities on Expedia’s Open World™ technology platform that significantly improve the experience for every traveler,” Archana Arunkumar, Expedia Group’s senior vice president of platform, said in a statement at that time. 

Each of the startups are listed with a description on the Expedia website. 

Some of them include: 

• Becoming Rentable, a short-term rental platform focused on accessible properties
• Greether, a platform dedicated to women that connects travelers with tour guides
• Misterb&b, a short-term rental platform dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community