Adventure travel expert WeRoad closed a $58 million Series C to support the growth of its international expansion plans and to finance its new operating launch in the United States market. The newly raised round was led by global travel platform Airbnb, with the ongoing support of its former institutional investors and early-stage investor H14.
This transaction puts the total funding for the Milan-based travel tech startup to $100m since it was founded in 2017. It is a huge strategic win for the company as it readies to open its first physical store outside of the European ecosystem, where it has built an overwhelming industry-leading position in solos and groups.
Interestingly, the corporate reorganization coincided with the fundraising when WeRoad CEO Andrea D’Amico resigned from his active executive role to become Vice President of Hotels at Airbnb in San Francisco. However, he will keep a relationship with the startup by remaining on the board of its directors. After the fundraising, WeRoad will be under the management of its founding team, composed of Paolo De Nadai and the co-founders.
Targeting the Under-35 Solo Travel Phenomenon
For WeRoad, the business model is built around its core target audience of Millennials and Generation Zs and its focus on small-group adventure travel. Nearly 90% of people who book itineraries through the platform travel entirely solo. The startup purposely mixes small groups of strangers, usually just 15 per pool, by narrow age group and by particular travel temperaments: nature, cultural immersion, high activity and so forth.
Source: WeRoad
The platform’s backend infrastructure functions mainly as an asset, a light operator at least in terms of the assets it owns or controls. The firm does not own or operate the physical hotels, transport vehicles, or aviation assets needed to execute a trip. It merely facilitates the social transaction of the trip. At scale, this requires a supply-side social setup, and for that, the business uses a decentralised crowd-sourcing model with over 4,000 groups of European group coordinators. They act as local travel buddies, navigating the travel routes and trying to connect the participants.
The company was established 9 years ago, and from then until now, there has been a record of over 300,000 individual travellers, with a growing database of more than 1,000 unique travel experiences spanning all inhabited lands and an online following of more than 3.5 million across their fundamental regional operations.
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Capitalizing on the High-Growth Real-Life Economy
Airbnb’s strategic support confirms a broader macrotrend that follows the pandemic, which WeRoad defines as the In Real Life (IRL) economy. While the conventional technology players continue to leverage digital immersion, artificial intelligence applications, and increased screen time, another group of travel tech players aims to extract revenue from offline interactions. The investment validates the thesis that young consumers are, indeed, searching for more ways to connect IRL to address a prevalent loneliness epidemic.
Company internal numbers also demonstrate excellent product-market fit with its current European operation, with almost 60% of users rebooking a second trip through the site after having experienced their first itinerary. The first, high-engagement ‘icebreaker’ days of every tailored trip are designed to accelerate compatibility and ease of group familiarity among strangers.
Executing the Multi-City United States Rollout
This investment will be used to build localised locations in a handful of major American metro markets during the rest of 2018. Instead of opening up with its comprehensive international travel booking catalog, WeRoad will seed the US growth with its independent community site, WeMeet.
Initially launched in 2025 to facilitate the secondary growth engine, WeMeet is a hyper-local, real-world social event aggregator for everything from day hikes and dinner parties to running clubs and evening yoga sessions. The sub-platform does not require consumers to purchase an international vacation package to participate. It only serves as a seamless, high-funnel customer acquisition channel. In its first year of full service, WeMeet attracted more than 50K consumers in 2K events in 35 destinations across Europe, resulting in 150K independent downloads to date.
