Less than a month after raising $150 million in new funding,
GoEuro is adding new services to its multimodal travel platform.
The Berlin-based company is adding ferry search and booking,
starting with a focus on the Mediterranean Sea and Italian providers SNAV and Travelmar
and rolling out more widely in the coming months.
GoEuro’s vice president of product, Dave Price, says this is a natural next step to expand beyond trains, buses and air.
“We know - and we see search data - that people are wanting
to move from point A to point B, and they don’t think about the modes of transport
they need to go on, but we very easily see it could involve a train plus a
ferry or flight plus a ferry,” Price says.
Subscribe to our newsletter below
Price says the site’s multi-language capability and customer
service will help to alleviate the stress travelers may experience dealing with
multiple ferry providers who often have limited digital booking capabilities.
And he says the company’s work to bring bus inventory and
booking into GoEuro has provided valuable experience that is now facilitating
the integration of ferry suppliers.
“The challenges stretch beyond the technology,” he says.
“How do we ensure we offer the right ticketing, the right experiences,
when it comes to what customers can travel with - can they travel with dogs,
pets, etc. These are all very different when you move from bus to bus, when you
move from ferry to ferry, when you move from Croatia to Italy or anywhere else.
We are here to solve those problems for our users.”
GoEuro is also launching on-site booking for hundreds of air
carriers. Until now, users were redirected to a third-party site to book flights.
Looking ahead, Price says it is working to offer users the
ability to combine multiple modes of transportation in one itinerary and
payment on desktop or mobile.
“Today those will be separate bookings all available within GoEuro.
You are able to compare, to get the right fare, to get the right ticket,” Price
says.
“In the future we are actively working to make that a single
bookable experience for the user.”
In conjunction with these new services, GoEuro has created
a new brand design and more content around things such as add-ons and trip duration
and transfers.