Mindtrip, an artificial intelligence-powered travel platform, has announced $12
million in funding from Forerunner Ventures as well as existing
investor Costanoa.
Mindtrip intends to use the investment to help the company
scale operations as it rolls out of a series of collaborative trip planning
features that will help people who travel together navigate each traveler’s
preferences in one place.
“For too long the industry has made the assumption that only
one person plans a trip, rather than taking multiple people’s opinions and
desires into consideration. But in reality, the majority of us travel with
someone else. And, as anyone who has planned a trip with others can attest,
coordination, let alone managing preferences, is not easy,” said Andy Moss, co-founder
and CEO of Mindtrip. “We believe every trip should be as
delightful to plan as it is to experience, and we are thrilled to have the
support of trailblazers in the industry as we continue to offer new solutions
and push the envelope of what’s possible.”
With its recent studies revealing that 90% of people travel
with at least one other person, and 73% of those people being primarily family,
Mindtrip is also introducing group chat within the platform to coincide with
its funding.
The new feature provides a social space where group members
can comment on and discuss potential plans, share their favorite sports and
highlight each person’s must-sees while also consulting Mindtrip’s bot for
recommendations and suggestions throughout the planning process.
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As travelers use the feature to outline the key elements of
their trip, Mindtrip’s platform will merge each traveler’s
personalized preferences into a single itinerary, allow all group members to
share further recommendations, add or remove items from their trip plan and store chat history within the Mindtrip interface to be able to revisit
suggestions in their travel plan.
“Group travel has been more of a niche offering up until
this point, and that’s just counter to the way we all travel,” said Greg Sands, founder and managing partner at Costanoa Ventures. “From the moment we first saw
the Mindtrip platform, we were impressed with the team’s ability to cut through
the noise and focus on what matters to travelers most. We are thrilled to be
involved with a company whose thought process is exactly right when it comes to
leveraging AI to improve the travel experience and we are confident with
collaboration tools like Mindtrip, the future of travel as we know it will be
redefined.”
