Skift Take
Now that Planned has secured significant funding and added some of the travel industry’s biggest names to its board of directors, the next step is to expand its AI and travel booking capabilities.
Miguel Neves
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Canadian sourcing and booking platform Planned announced Thursday that it has secured $35 million in a Series B funding round. Drive Capital The round was led by Outsiders Fund and two other privately held companies.
The funding round brings Planned’s total funding to $65 million since it first launched in 2017. The company said it has seen significant five-fold revenue growth this year. Planned told Skift Meetings that it expects to achieve profitability by 2025 with “millions of dollars” in annual recurring revenue.
“We’ve made impressive progress since our Series A, growing revenue 30x and earning the trust of major clients such as PwC, Block and AWS,” said Marc Bonin, CEO of Planned.
The company said it will use the funding to grow its AI services, continue its global expansion, and expand its travel booking capabilities.
Pland also said that Hopper’s CEO and co-founder Frederic Laronde “Planned’s innovative approach stands out in an industry that is almost tragically antiquated,” Lalonde said.
The Planned platform provides travel, venue and vendor sourcing, and manages payments configured to work in accordance with corporate spending policies.
The platform chooses not to offer an AI-powered chatbot interface, instead incorporating AI into several features. The ever-growing list of AI-powered features includes:
- Narrow down suitable venues based on your event brief
- Compare event venues based on past event data
- Pre-filling proposal requests
- Providing a price quote
“Our vision is to challenge the status quo of traditional travel and procurement agents (TMCs) by combining human service with AI to provide faster, more personalized service to customers. We believe that the TMC of the future must be technology-enabled, and the funding will allow us to accelerate our development,” Bonin said.
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Photo credit: Midjourney / Prompt: Sign a check to raise funding for a tech company
