Travel-Tech Firm Hotailors Adds New Capital, Rebrands

Another company in the hot travel-tech space has landed a major investment.

Poland-based Hotailors, in addition to announcing $24.2 million in funding from DC24 ASI, announced it has begun doing business under the name Worktrips.com.

The company specializes in artificial intelligence-driven booking of corporate travel. The funding and re-branding were reported by Phocuswire and other industry media.

The new capital, according to Hotailors, will be used for the re-branding and other unspecified expansion of the business.

Hotailors’ platform offers travel budget-control features that are common among companies providing assistance with booking of corporate travel and expense controls. Hotailors’ platform also offers extensive features that let clients offer digital-booking services for non-employee contractors.

The company said its platform offers employees the power to “automate the burden of expensing, reduce long approval times and apply travel policies effortlessly.”

“We managed to survive the most difficult pandemic period for the industry. It was a time of major redundancies and restructuring among agents specializing in business travel,” Chief Executive and Co-founder Filip Bloch said in a prepared statement. “We used this time to expand our sales team, develop our technology and IT department and strengthen our visibility. We are now seeing an upturn in the market and the return of multinational corporations to business travel.”

In addition to Bloch, Hotailors was co-founded in 2016 by Maciej Stopierzyński, who is chief technology officer, and Michał Szeksztełło, who is chief operating officer. The company’s website said they began working on ideas for travel technology companies in 2012 and got their big break in 2015 when they were accepted into an event called “Startup Summit” in Warsaw, Poland.

The travel technology space has been busy as of late, in part because travel technology platforms struggled to accommodate the travel needs of business travelers emerging from pandemic-related lockdowns.

In late April, PYMNTS reported that hedge fund Elliott Management and Siris Capital were forming a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, to pursue travel tech company Mondee.

Read more: Elliott Management Backs SPAC Deal for Travel-Tech Company Mondee

In January, Europe’s TravelPerk announced it had raised $115 million in new funding, giving the business a valuation of $1.3 billion.

See also: SMB Travel Platform TravelPerk Raises $115M