Tripscout raises $2.3M to scale its travel planning platform

Tripscout, an artificial intelligence-powered platform for travel inspiration and planning, has raised $2.3 million in a seed-plus round led by Corazon Capital. Additional investors include Accomplice, New Stack Ventures, MATH Ventures, M25 and more.

This brings the startup’s total funding to $4.6 million, with the last seed round coming in 2019.

With Tripscout, users input details such as destination, budget, timing and whether they are traveling with others, and the platform analyzes millions of articles, videos and tips from local experts to provide personalized recommendations that match those inputs. Users can save ideas to their itinerary and to a map.

The company says in 2020 it grew from two million to more than 200 million views per month on social media and surpassed one million app users.

“Our generation thinks about travel every single day. Even when we’re not on the road, we spend much of our free time dreaming and learning about the world, anticipating our next trip and planning our next moves in great detail,” says Konrad Waliszewski, co-founder and CEO of Tripscout.

“Yet because the industry incumbents have been so singularly obsessed with transactions, they’ve ignored this deep relationship we have with why and how we travel. Tripscout steps in as the solution: we’re revolutionizing the future of travel planning by offering a personalized discovery platform for all the places and topics you care about.”

Says Corazon Capital principal Phil Schwarz, “Travel is a $3 trillion industry, but there’s a graveyard of travel startups that haven’t been able to figure out customer acquisition because they’ve tried to play the same game as the incumbents. We doubled down on Konrad, Andy [Acs, co-founder and chief product officer] and the team at Tripscout not only because they are travel experts, but also because they’ve cracked the code on leveraging social media for scalable, cost-effective and organic customer acquisition, leading to nearly 1,000% year-over-year active user growth despite being in the middle of a pandemic.

"When you combine that with the industry-leading engagement metrics on the Tripscout platform - over 400% higher monthly retention rates compared to industry averages - we believe they’re well positioned to build a large, lasting company that creates the experience travelers should expect in the modern era." 

Along with the funding news, Tripscout says it has hired Dorth Raphaely is its new chief marketing officer.