Duffel, the British travel tech company, has raised USD 30 million from investors to launch its innovative new booking platform with some of the world’s biggest airlines, including American Airlines, British Airways, Lufthansa Group, Aegean Airlines, Vueling and Iberia.
The company enables travel agencies to plug in directly to airlines’ reservation systems via an API so that they can pull real-time flight offers, make bookings, access live seat availability, and buy extra services. Until now, new digital and mobile travel agencies – Duffel’s target market – have been forced to put up with long lead times and high costs to access clunky flight booking systems, legacy APIs and outdated, cryptic screens. By giving agents a way to connect instantly with airlines, it represents the biggest shakeup of the travel sector since the launch of budget air travel.
Index Ventures, the backers of Adyen, Dropbox and Slack, led the series B round, and were joined by existing investors Benchmark Capital and Blossom Capital.
Steve Domin, co-founder and CEO of Duffel said: “A new breed of online agencies want to access reservation systems quickly and seamlessly. By reinventing the underwiring between online agents and airlines we can transform the world of travel booking and reduce barriers to entry for innovative new companies that are offering travellers a whole new way of creating a holiday or trip.”
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