Business travel platform TripActions is aggressively
expanding in Europe, bolstered by a minority investment from - and strategic
partnership with - Lufthansa Group’s Lufthansa Innovation Hub.
The parties would not disclose the financial terms of the
investment, but TripActions co-founder and CEO Ariel Cohen says it closes the
company’s Series D round with more than $250 million raised at a valuation of $4
billion.
TripActions
and Lufthansa Group have been working together for several months, and in
November announced that inventory from Lufthansa Group airlines (Lufthansa,
Austrian Airlines, Swiss and Brussels Airlines) had been added to TripActions’
NDC marketplace.
Cohen says the two parties have
been discussing additional ways to collaborate to improve the business travel
experience, and this new partnership will enable “direct access between the research
and development teams, the product teams and the sales teams” from the two
companies.
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"We are excited to enter into this
strategic partnership with TripActions to foster modern airline retailing to
the benefit of our corporate customers," says Tamur Goudarzi Pour, senior vice
president of revenue management and distribution at Lufthansa Group Hub
Airlines.
"Jointly we aim to develop a unique customer experience and
are committed to shaping the industry through our joint distribution
innovation."
TripActions currently serves more than 3,000 enterprises
around the world. It has had offices in London and Amsterdam for two years to
serve its global clients that have offices there.
In the past year, it added about 150 clients that are based
in Europe, and Cohen says that has helped TripActions learn the market and fine-tune
its product to serve the unique needs of European companies.
One concept he says came up “in every discussion with every European
prospect” was an interest in carbon offsetting. So in October, TripActions
announced it is providing emissions data to customers at both a company-wide
and individual traveler level.
Additional features tailored to the European market include centralized
billing to serve companies that do not pay for travel with credit cards and the
addition of rail providers.
“We needed to do all these things before saying now we are
ready to announce we are really there in Europe,” Cohen says.
“From a product and offering standpoint, you have to
understand the market." The company expects to double its
staff in EMEA by the end of this year, to more than 250 people.
To date, TripActions has raised more than $480 million.