Travel technology start-up bd4travel has raised $4.2 million in Series A funding having become a UK firm and one of 13 in London’s new TravelTech Lab.
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New backers agree $4.2 million Series A funding round for bd4travel
Travel technology start-up bd4travel has raised $4.2 million in Series A funding having become a UK firm and one of 13 in London’s new TravelTech Lab.
The firm, which has its base in Germany, was set up by the former chief executive of Amadeus owned Traveltainment Andy Owen-Jones and promises to bring ‘hyper-personalisation’ to the travel industry.
It uses latest big data techniques to carry out predictive detailed analysis of web visitors to help firms hone their websites to maximise conversion and sales.
The funding round was led by Hoxton Ventures and Talis Capital and saw Expedia founder and partner at TCV Simon Breakwell installed as chairman.
Hoxton Ventures’ partner Hussein Kanji also becomes a board members along with Owen-Jones.
Bd4travel was picked to take a desk at the London & Partners-run Traveltech Lab which was opened by the Duke of York earlier this year.
London & Partners is the official promotional company for the Mayor of London and aims to make the UK capital the world’s leading hub for travel technology.
Owen-Jones said the move to turn bd4travel into a UK registered firm was driven by the investors who see the UK as offering a more favourable investment environment.
He said bd4travel’s technology takes personalisation beyond just helping forms achieve better than the average results from personalisation.
The technology builds up a detailed ‘digital DNA’ of the customer based on which clients can make predictions about their behaviour and personalise their offering in real time.
Owen-Jones said the current generation of tools, which ignore 90% of data firms are able to capture, are limited in their ability to generate actionable insights on each unique user.
He said: “When our customers see that we can generate rich user profiles and predict the travel wishes for anonymous site visitors, when all they’ve seen before is their traffic numbers, clickstream and CRM measures, they tend to be pretty blown away/
“The future of the travel market is hyper-personalisation, where users are appreciated and serviced as individuals and travel offers are recommended according to their actual desire”.
Kanji, of Hoxton Partners, said: “We back teams which have the opportunity to become global successes based on game changing technology. Bd4travel is well positioned to be disruptive in one of the world’s largest industry segments.”
