When COVID-19 sent the world into lockdown in March, AI travel agent Snaptravel saw its business drop by 80% overnight.
According to the company, the Toronto-based series A startup had been growing 300% year over year with $1 billion in sales projected by 2021. Snaptravel books hotels over messaging services WhatsApp, Messenger, and SMS, and works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. It had raised $22.4 million since its founding in 2016 with funding from an impressive lineup of investors including Inovia Capital, Australian telecom giant Telstra, Expedia’s vice chair and CEO Peter Kern, and NBA All-Star Steph Curry.
Business had been booming at the start of 2020, but when bookings spiked in February, Snaptravel’s founders, Hussein Fazal and Henry Shi, knew something was wrong. The increase in demand was being driven by steep discounting as hotels tried to mitigate rising pandemic concerns.
Weeks later,…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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