TravelPerk buys US rival AmTrav, raises $135 million from Blackstone, BlueOwl

Business travel management platform Travel Perk has announced its acquisition of Amtrak as the European Unicorn looks to further expand its business in the United States. The company also announced a fresh $135 million backing from asset managers Blackstone and Blue Owl. Abby Meyer joins us now the Co founder and CEO of Travel Perk. Abby, thank you very much for joining us. Just set the scene for us. Why are you interested in further expanding into the United States market? Yeah, thanks for having me. Good morning, everybody. We're very pleased with this acquisition. the US is the second largest business travel market globally. Companies in the US spend over $300 billion a year on business travel. We have been growing very fast organically in the markets and with this acquisition, this is going to be our largest market in the world coming 2026. What we're saying, I think just even anecdotally, when you hop on a plane these days, it's full right at the front. There feels like there's a lot of business travelers out there. How is it different versus pre pandemic and what's the market like in terms of strength for corporate travel now? Yes, so we actually released last week our proprietary research about 2000 companies and how they travel. It's fascinating, fascinating to see how business travel has come back full scale. We actually see this year globally, business travel spend will surpass 2019 in terms of traffic. We actually have been out of the pandemic mode and growing back in 2021. So it has been booming here, although it's changing. And for example, companies that are more hybrid today and you see more internal meetings, offsites, kickoffs, who became a real category for connecting humans in real life. And this is something that we are able to provide a service for, for our products and travel. What about overall spend though? Because it feels as though some corporate travelers are traveling more than ever before, but others are not traveling as much. And in terms of the the sort of seats that people are booking, it feels like there is a more conservative approach trying to tame some of the travel spending. Yeah, you definitely see different modes of transportation. We sell rail, for example, in Europe and even in eastern North America. This is an increasingly popular mode of transportation. It's convenient, it's more sustainable. So you definitely see different modes of transportation. What we don't see is a human disconnect. People are social animals and they travel to meet each other. And this is something that post pandemic, we, we actually seek more of, not less. Abby, very nice to see you today. What have you got that the others haven't got? It's a, it's a, it's fragmented, but it's huge. And there's always some very established players there. And they're all, and I've actually been on at least three of their websites just to check. And if you put in their name, plus AI, they've all got an offering. I'm just wondering, what are you offering that the market hasn't already got? Yeah, We completely revved our strategy after Open AI released the the first Chattubidy version back in 2023 at the beginning of the year. And the real implementation of AI, what really moves the needle for us is going really deep in areas you don't even see the consumer. Just as one example, we used to have a team of people reading emails from the airlines, which is just how you have to handle this very archaic technological stack that the business travel industry is built on today. Thanks for our product model and our data. We have trained the model to read the emails, understand the context and act upon. For example, if your flight is is cancelled and the airline lets us know by e-mail, we can immediately automatically flight for you. This is something that was not possible before. And if you look at the the issue of scaling a legacy travel agency is that you just need to employ 10s of thousands of travel agents and at some point it becomes operationally just too complex. Thanks to AI, we are able to scale this year. We have actually doubled the volume that we processed without increasing the size of the team. And this is something that was not possible before this technology. So implementing AI has definitely moved the needle for us. Why do we need agents to book our travel? I, I've got to be brutally honest, I often find that I think the one that we use, I, I can get the flights cheaper. Why why don't we? Isn't there just a good bit of software out there for corporates such as CNBC and NBC as well? Why don't we just buy a bit of software rather than relying on people like yourself? It exists. It's called Topark. This is what we do. So we are a software and you can book, you can self book and we have the open Internet on the platform. So this is actually the innovation of proper compared to the legacy travel agencies and we should definitely connect off of there. And I'll I'll make sure that you guys have an account with us. What is still needed, just because of how the technology of this industry has been built in the 60s and 70s is agents to change the flight, make your or, you know, make an amendment to your reservation at the hotel. And this is now finally the last piece that we can automate thanks to AI. But definitely we have an app and and website and people, our customers are actually self booking their trips and they're getting better prices than what you can find in open Internet. Abby, thank you very much for joining us today. Abby Mayer with US Co founder and CEO, Travel Perk.