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.”