GetYourGuide sold passes about 25 million tickets through the tourism activity app picks up $484 million

GetYourGuide was able to raise a huge capital in this round of their investment. GetYourGuide is a startup from Berlin, which has become popular in the marketplace recently. They have become popular for booking sightseeing tours, tickets for attraction and all the experiences around the world. The company announced today that they ended up picking a total of $484 million in their Series E round of funding. This has helped the company to take its valuation up to $1 billion.

This funding has become a milestone for mainly two reasons. The company claims that this round of investment is one of the biggest funding rounds in the travel experience industry. It is estimated that the market estimated to be worth $150 million this year. This marketplace will end up getting a rise of $183 billion in the year 2020. This is one of the biggest rounds, which has ever occurred in the European startup market.

This company has successfully able to sell about 25 million tickets for attractions, tours, and other experiences. The company has about 50,000 experiences to offer now and it is expected to grow in the coming years. The company has shown a lot of signs of growth from 2017. In just a year 2017, they were able to sell about 10 million tickets. Their retailed catalog number was 35,000. The company will now be focusing on its Original tours and travel experience. They will be including more activities in the United States and Asia because these are the two places where the market is growing rapidly.

This round of funding was basically led by Soft Bank via Vision Fund, along with Heartcore Capital, Lakestar, Swisscanto, Temasek. The company has now raised a total of $600 million. Soft Bank is now on the quest to investing money in different companies. The company has already invested their money on a few of the big players in Germany and has successfully emerged out of the market. Some of the other big players on which Soft bank has invested its money are Auto1 and Wirecard. The company has also helped to back OYO which is a startup in India.in

There has been a leak of reports which show that GetYouGuide was able to process a total of $300 million to about $500 million. In April, sources revealed that the round is not yet over and the number which has been published by different media is not correct. The involvement of Soft Bank made a huge difference in the deal.

The exact valuation of the round was not yet disclosed by the Chief executing officer of GetYouGuide Johannes Reck who is also the co-founder of the application along with Martin Sieber, Pascal Mathis, Tobias Rein, and Tao Tao. In an interview with TechCrunch, it was revealed that the company has passed the $1 billion mark. It was estimated that the valuation of the company was about $1.78 billion, but the number has not been confirmed by the company yet.

The growth of GetYouGuide has also started to rise along with platforms such as Airbnb. This startup has helped to change the way how people travel these days. The days are far gone where we used to go to a travel agent to make all our bookings. Now we can simply sit at home and book all our flights and hotels with our mobile phone.

Along with this,  you also get the benefit of choosing from different options when you are traveling which is a very good thing. This company has helped people rethink the whole travel industry. The GetYourGuide was basically used by old people in 2010 when they were traveling with their family and want to look for places which feel like home even when they are away from home. The application has worked really hard to make sure that the website has good feedback and people don’t face any kind of issue when they use it.

The CEO said:

“They want to do things, to have something to post on Instagram, the average age of a GetYourGuide user now is 25-40. At some point, staff in Asia had the idea of crafting a ‘GetYourGuide Instagram Tour of Bali.’ That really took off, and now this is the number-one tour booked in the region.”

The company has announced today that Ameet Ranadive is joining as their chief product officer. Ameer was earlier at Instagram where he was leading the Wellbeing product team. He has earlier also been the vice president and general manager of Twitter. Nils Chrestin will also be part of the company joining as the CFO. The company has also realized that they are still left with a lot of development and there is further scope expansion. As it continues further, some of the offerings are taking a direct role in the branding procedure. There was a time when all the tickets are posted on GetYourGuide by third parties.

It’s absolutely nothing that others are closing in on the experience. The main core of GetYourGuide business is Airbnb to diversify on how they can increase their revenues and also extend all the touch points with the guests beyond accommodations. Groupon is also one of the places where the coupon can be sold. All the travel portals that generally sell plain tickets ends up pushing more activities to users. The activities of GetYourGuide has suddenly become attractive for people. There is a huge competition going on between platforms, giving accommodation places and ones giving hotel rooms.

The companies will be able to differentiate with each other by only adding a platform to the native destination. According to Reck, the focus is buying goods:

“Consumers, especially millennials, are spending an increasing portion of their disposable income on travel experiences. We believe GetYourGuide is leading this seismic shift by consolidating the fragmented global supply base of tour operators and modernizing access for travelers globally,” said Ted Fike, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, in a statement. “This combination creates powerful network effects for their business that is fueling their strong growth. We are excited to partner with their passionate and talented leadership team.”

Fike is joining the board with this round.