12/10/2019
Event travel at the trend – new millions for Travelcircus
TRAVELCIRCUS (www.travelcircus.de), Germany’s largest entertainment travel platform, has found another renowned investor in Airbridge Equity Partners (AEP), who is investing almost 5 million euros in the travel start-up in a Series A financing round with existing investors, such as MAIRDUMONT VENTURES.Since its foundation in 2014, more than 800,000 travelers have already booked through Travelcircus – 250,000 of them this year! The fast-growing travel platform for event short trips specializes in the packaging of event tickets and hand-picked premium hotels.
Travelcircus was founded in 2014 by Bastian Böckenhüser and Mathias Zeitler and has become the market leader in the German entertainment travel market with self-developed technologies, its own distribution and strong direct partnerships with companies such as Ticketmaster, ATG, Stage Entertainment and Disney. Travelcircus is also the exclusive hotel and ticket partner for the internationally record-breaking play “Harry Potter and the Enchanted Child”, which will be shown in Hamburg from 2020.
Demand for event and entertainment travel growing
The global entertainment travel market is still in development, but is growing rapidly due to the global shift in consumer interests from goods to experiences; the shift to the so-called “experience economy”. This market will be worth 400 billion dollars by 2025. Travelcircus focuses on the largest and most profitable industries such as musicals & theatre, theme parks, museums & exhibitions, sporting events, trade shows, festivals & live concerts and wellness.
Travelcircus convinces customers and investors on the market
Travelcircus offers a digital marketplace that meets customers’ demand for easy to book experiences and providers’ needs for better pricing. With the rapidly growing and increasingly non-transparent nature of the Internet, customers are looking for an inspiration platform that offers attractive, quality-tested experiences that can be cumulated and booked cost-effectively in a fast booking route. Event providers and hotels are prepared to offer their services at a discount if they are sold in packages. Travelcircus offers the first all-round solution for travelers, hotels and event partners.
Growth through internationalization
In order to ensure the continued rapid growth, Travelcircus plans to use the investment to expand the current team from 65 to approx. 100 employees and to increase the turnover from currently almost 40 million euros to 100 million euros by 2021.
At the beginning of the year, Travelcircus was able to recruit the experienced tourism expert Kai Klitzke (former L’TUR CFO) as its new CFO. Travelcircus is planning its internationalisation from Q1 2020, starting in Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Further markets such as Belgium, Denmark and France are to follow.
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