- In the last five years, travel startups have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital funding.
- TripActions completed a $250 million funding round, catapulting its valuation to $4 billion.
- According to investor Dovi Frances, the company’s achievement in such a short time is unprecedented.
Travel startups are flying high! In the last five years, these companies, that include short-term rental startups, travel and tourism apps, marketplaces for experiences and other tech platforms, have raised more than $1 billion in venture capital funding, as reported by Tech Crunch.
Last november, TripActions Inc. raised $154 million and entered the unicorn club. This week, the corporate travel management service founded in 2015, announced it is now worth four times as much.
According to Bloomberg, the company completed a $250 million funding round led by investor Andreessen Horowitz, catapulting its valuation to $4 billion. The move puts TripActions into a new and select club of multibillion-dollar startups, with a value that exceeds even some of its cloud-based publicly traded peers.
Global travel and tourism is one of the most valuable industries, worth approximately $7 trillion. While the company’s goal is to bring consumer travel services to the global market for business trips, Global Business Travel Association predicts that spending in that category will reach about $1.7 trillion by 2022.
In an interview for Calculist, investor Dov Frances, founder of Group 11, said that the global unicorn list numbers 346 companies worth a total of $ 1.1 trillion, but only 60 private tech companies worldwide have attained a valuation of $4 billion—26 if one considers the U.S. alone. “Considering TripActions was founded only four years ago, the company’s achievement is unprecedented”, he added.
