As the beleaguered tours, activities, and attractions industry slogs its way through a relentless global travel depression, one venture-backed reservation system provider for tour and activity operators has a little good news.
Berlin-based bookingkit has raised an undisclosed round (some media have reported €5 million) as the company comes out of a better-than-expected summer booking period. The company, which primarily serves European tour and activity operators, was already seeing positive trends with bookings with forward-looking summer bookings returning to 85% of pre-crisis levels by June.
Christoph Kruse, bookingkit’s managing director, confirmed to Arival that the summer rebound was driven by domestic and intra-European travel.
Like this? register for our Newsletter to continue the conversation
Sign UpRes Tech Could be a Winner in the Pandemic
Reservation system providers, especially those that generate revenue through booking fees, have been just as negatively affected by the global travel lockdown as have operators and distributors. However, they should benefit over the long term as consumer behavior shifts towards more advanced planning and online booking.
The need for operators to manage capacity, maintain social distancing, offer contactless ticketing, and capture customer information for contact tracing is driving technology adoption and change among tour, activity, and attraction operators. Those reservation systems that can make it through the downturn could be well-positioned for the recovery.
bookingkit’s funding round, which follows a series C round raised in March 2019, includes investors from its previous rounds. The full press release can be found here.
The news follows Checkfront’s $9 million raise in March of this year, just as the pandemic was accelerating across Europe and the U.S.
WANT TO HEAR THE IN-INDUSTRY NEWS FIRST?
Arival 360, October 26 – November 5, is a series of four one-day virtual events featuring exclusive insights on current trends and best practices, insights from leading operators, the new opportunities and challenges for online travel agencies, the role of technology providers and destinations across the globe on the challenges we all face – and the decisions we must take – to navigate the many paths to revival.
