TripActions is a travel management company for businesses and business travelers. Booking and managing travel can be done on the web or via a smartphone app.
History
The Palo Alto, California-based travel company, TripActions Inc., was founded in 2015 by Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig. In May 2015, TripActions received a $4 million Seed round led by Zeev Ventures with participation from Dovi Frances and Lightspeed Venture Partners. In January 2016, TripActions received $14.6 million series A round led by Oren Zeev Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Group 11. The company officially launched out of stealth mode and announced their funding in January 2017. In October 2017, the company announced that they had raised an additional $12.5 Million led by Lightspeed with participation from Zeev Ventures and Group 11. The company announced a $51 million Series B round led by the same two investors with participation from prior investors. The company moved in June 2017 from Menlo Park, California to their headquarters in Palo Alto. In July 2018, TripActions announced their international expansion to Europe with an office in London and their European headquarters in Amsterdam. They shared potential plans to expand to the Asia-Pacific region to scale their customer support infrastructure. In September 2018, the company opened an office in Sydney, Australia. In November 2018, the company announced a valuation north of $1 billion and a $154 million Series Cfunding round led by new investor Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from repeat investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, and Group 11. They also announced the addition of Ben Horowitz to their Board of Directors. In February 2019, the company announced its new flight storefront in alignment with major airline partners and industry association ATPCO. The storefront includes branding and imagery of cabin classes and amenities for each airline. It works for domestic and international flights, including international to international itineraries, and for flights on joint venture partners of American, Delta and United. In February 2019, the company announced the additions of Meagen Eisenberg as Chief Marketing Officer and Leslie Kurkjian Crowe as Chief People Officer to their executive board. In February 2019, TripActions was recognized as one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in Travel for 2019. In June 2019, the company announced its NDC-enabled platform in partnership with United Airlines. At the same time, TripActions had Series D of funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Zeev Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Group 11, which was closed at $250 million. The total valuation of the company reached $4 billion. In July 2019, the company appointed Ciara Govern as Chief Customer Officer. In September 2019, the company announced its carbon impact initiative through providing customers visibility into the emission output of their travel programs. In the same month, TripActions was recognized in the Top 20 of the Forbes Cloud 100 award. In November 2019, TripActions announced that it had enabled an NDC-enabled direct connection to the Lufthansa Group. In December 2019, the company announced the addition of Thomas Tuchscherer as Chief Financial Officer to scale corporate development and finance operations. In March 2020, TripActions laid off nearly 300 people together in a single videoconference due to the COVID-19 travel freeze.
How it works
All functionality including administrative travel management can be done through desktop and mobile application. Users have the ability to book trips, modify reservations, track travel itineraries, chat with travel support agents, receive real-time travel notifications, and expense trips. TripActions partners with multiple suppliers in the market to provide users with a wide array of travel selection. Their travel inventory comes from consumer, corporate, and direct integrations. The platform uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize booking results, inventory and the support experience. Results are prioritized using the company's travel policies, real-time market prices and individual traveler preferences including loyalty program memberships. This often results in the employee earning no rewards for their stays, and not being able to use the apps for their rewards accounts, depending on the chain of the hotel, providing a suboptimal travel experience for the employees. The system's admin dashboard tracks company spend, potential savings, and employees' travel patterns. In accordance with duty of care, the admin dashboard features a live map that shows where employees are traveling in real time. Finance and travel teams can contact travelers directly within the application in emergency situations.
Partnerships
The company partners with Sabre Corporation and is a member of the Priceline Group Affiliate Network as well as the Expedia, Inc. Partner Network to combine inventories for flights, accommodations, and rental cars from direct, corporate, and consumer sites. Users can access mobile apps for Uber and Lyft in their mobile travel itineraries while traveling. Additional partners include Coupa and Expensify for expense management within the platform.
