Attractions marketplace for travelers and travel companies Tiqets is set to announce a $4 million equity Series A round led by Capital Mills, a Dutch venture capital firm.
The founders of the 3-year-old startup, based in Amsterdam, raised $1.45 million previously.
Tiqets, which has 35 full-time employees, offers travelers mobile tickets to attractions, museums, and entertainment, through its direct-to-consumer channels.
Founded at the end of 2013, Tiqets also has a distribution partner business, helping distribute bookable content to online travel agencies, hotels, travel agencies, and other third-parties via API integrations. It connects to an attractions' ticketing system or else lists the supplier's tickets using its own inventory system.
It also gives to suppliers the technology they need to handle mobile and instant bookings if they don't have their own vendor.
Tiqets's database platform is notable for offering instant and mobile tickets. CEO Luuc Elzinga told Tnooz:
"Our focus is on making our biggest markets 100% digital - no printing and instantly delivered-- and to give every traveler a hassle-free experience to enjoy entertainment."
"I’m incredibly proud of our extreme high Net Promoter Scores [NPS, a metric of customer satisfaction]."
He said his company already has the technology to make sure that every booking is instantly confirmed and offers mobile entrance via a barcode scanner. ("Who has a printer available when traveling?" he jokes.)
Elzinga added:
"But some suppliers/venues haven’t yet upgraded their technology. We help them to make this next step without the urge to replace all old technology investments or build difficult integrations.
"We have multiple technical solutions to make sure a partnership will not only result in more visitors, but we also help with crowd management (more and more important, to keep smile on the faces of customers) and with marketing insights about their visitors."
"Many venues work with our scan app. We also provide mobile phones if they want. Or we integrate with their systems through API connections, barcode integrations and many others. The venues don’t have to worry about the tech -- as they are mostly allergic to all of that. It can be our job to make sure it works."
Elzinga says the key differentiator for his company is that Tiqets sells only mobile and instant delivered tickets for both “dated” and “non-dated” tickets. To manage this it must go the “last mile” and contract all the venues directly instead of working with (local) aggregators.
By this summer, the company, which already operates in major markets like Barcelona, London, Paris, and Rome, will expand to 14 additional cities, such as Dubai, Berlin, and Copenhagen. Later this month, it will enter New York City and Prague.
Tiqets said it grew by more than 3,500% in 2015, though it didn't disclose what the baseline was. The CEO did predict that his company's growth in volume, revenue, and profit this year will "again be quite steep."
See the Tnooz TLabs profile of Tiqets, and our coverage from a year ago.