Journera - one of PhocusWire’s Hot 25 Startups for 2020 - has raised $11.6 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz and B Capital, with participation from Pritzker Group Venture Capital and The Boston Consulting Group. All four investors participated in Journera’s Series A round in 2018.
Journera’s commercial partners include Hilton, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, United Airlines and American Airlines. With this latest round the company has raised more than $26 million.
Journera CEO Jeff Katz, founding CEO of Orbitz Worldwide and CEO of Swissair, says this fundraising effort began prior to the COVID-19 crisis, but the commitment from investors shows they continue to recognize the value in combining data from the entire travel journey to improve the customer experience.
“The investor view is that what we are building ... has an important future,” he says.
“The future as we see it is way more about the journey. The idea that I can board a flight and automatically be checked in by the hotel or my ride-share can be adjusted automatically because the ride-share operator knows about the rest of my journey, and so on.
Katz says the platform also creates marketing efficiency for brands dealing with cuts to both staff and budgets because it enables them to be “more precise, more surgical in how you market ... in what customer gets served with what product.”
Journera uses a pricing model that allows customers to “decide customer by customer, journey by journey, what benefit you’ll provide and pay for it there” – which Katz cites as an advantage as companies are more reluctant to make big upfront investments in new technology.
In March, Journera launched JourneyVision, a solution to match hotel reservations to air, ground or other relevant reservations to drive better personalization.
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