Together with its team of five people, The Trip Boutique has impressed the Austrian Tourism Board at the înno Up Challenge, winning the first prize in the Österreich Werbung/Austrian National Tourist Office challenge. This accolade is not only a recognition but also opens doors for a commercial pilot project, providing increased visibility in Austrian and international markets.
The Trip Boutique was established in 2017 by CEO and co-founder Fernanda Barrence as a virtual travel advisor enabling travelers to customise their trips and receive recommendations curated with artificial intelligence (AI). While working with end customers was a positive experience - as the company’s founder and CEO Fernanda Berrence acknowledged - high customer acquisition costs created barriers to quickly scaling, prompting the company to explore a new lucrative market opportunity, particularly in addressing major pain points for travel brands.
The B2B pivot began with an exploratory Proof of Concept (PoC) with early adopters to validate its travel-as-a-service solution and tailor their solution to meet the specific needs of travel agents, customer service, concierge, and marketing professionals to help them generate hyper-personalized travel itineraries and contextual recommendations based on travelers' preferences throughout their travel journeys. AI continued to play a pivotal role in Trip Boutique's solution, handling tasks such as data processing, client profiling, recommendation engine operation, and personalized content generation. This allows travel professionals to concentrate on building relationships, leveraging AI for tasks that demand analytical prowess.
While the B2C website remains live to showcase capabilities to potential B2B customers, The Trip Boutique has introduced significant changes to the revamped product. It has developed new interfaces to address the requirements of B2B customers, resulting in additional modules such as CRM, Knowledge Hub, Itinerary Builder, Personalized Marketing, and Analytics. The company is working on enabling seamless integration with clients' existing systems to enhance overall efficiency.
Growing customer base and eyes on the USThe rollout in late 2023 coincided with the travel industry's recovery from the pandemic-induced travel break, making it an opportune time for market adoption. The startup addresses customer segments such as DMOs (Destination Marketing Organizations), OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) and, retail travel agencies and luxury travel, with customers such as HolidayCheck Premium, VisitOslo, Budapest Brand. Most recently, Twerenbold Reisen and the Austrian National Tourism Board joined the startup’s customer base.
Investors have also continued to support the startup’s ambitions. In 2020, the company closed its seed round, with extensions in 2022 and 2023 from investors, including SICTIC and angel investors such as Peter Müller (founder of Start Angels Network), and prominent investors from the travel industry, like Elisabeth Stevens (formerly Booking), Samih Sawiris and Susanna Lemann. In total, the company has raised an undisclosed seven-digit amount and has plans to secure additional funding to fuel its market entry into the US market and growth into the luxury travel segment.
(RAN)
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