Welcome Pickups, an Athens, Greece-based in-destination travel services provider, has raised €3.3 million.
The funds will be used to aid in product development, including for a traveler app, as well as to build its core team and to add industry partners such as airlines and cruise lines.
VentureFriends, Market One Capital, Howzat, Jabbar and Openfund participated in the round.
Founded in 2015, Welcome Pickups offers what it calls a “holistic” in-destination travel experience by accommodating guests from pickup to drop-off.
In addition to transfer services, Welcome Pickups can provide guests with travel products such as SIM cards, Wi-Fi hotspots or skip-the-line tickets for attractions, plus drivers can recommend and provide transportation to various tours and activities.
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“We love how the Welcome Pickups team was able to disrupt the used case of transfer services and tune it almost to perfection,” says Market One Capital’s Marcin Kurek.
“Great execution in marketing, product, sales combined with super high customer satisfaction enabled them to build an international business in a very short period of time. We see a great potential in scaling the current model but also extending it to related services.”
For hotels, Welcome Pickups offers Welcome for Hotels, which helps hoteliers streamline processes and take advantage of guest data. Similarly for short-term rental hosts, the service Welcome for BnBs aims to coordinate check-in and checkout between hosts and guests.
“We have a winning combination of excellent staff and adequate funding to scale our product through partnerships with hotels, BnB hosts, property tech companies,” says Savvas Georgiou, co-founder and CPO.
“We believe that every traveler deserves the warmest Welcome Pickups experience. We are dedicated to making our services as accessible and integrated as it gets in the travel tech industry.”
Last year, Welcome Pickups served more than 400,000 travelers in 32 destinations, and the company projects the number of customers will reach one million in 2019.