Former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford is one of a number of big names putting some angel investment into tours and activities service TourRadar.
The Austria-based startup (TLabs here) has won the undisclosed angel round from Blachford and Jörg Trouvain (former CEO of HolidayCheck, Christoph Prinz (ex-f:wz aviation system provider which sold to Sabre), Markus Wagner of Vienna incubator i5invest and Speed Invest, an Austrian angel fund.
The investment will allow TourRadar to expand its consumer-facing services to compliment its existing B2B social and mobile applications.
The company currently works with around 500 tour operators in 220 countries around the world, giving it approximately 20,000 tours on the portfolio.
The push into B2C comes as the marketplace for tours and activities continues to heat up in recent months following GetYourGuide's $14 million injection from Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe.
Pittman says:
"Digitalising, contextualising and shortening the sales process of multi-day tours (so not relying on phone calls) has not yet been successfully done and is something TourRadar is addressing for all operators (niche and multi-national operators)."
Blachford, Trouvain and Speed Invest's Daniel Keiper-Knorr will join Sebastian Heinzel (founder of social travel guide Tripwolf) on TourRadar’s Advisory Board.