Bath-based travel tech start-up Tickitto has booked itself onto a period of expansion after receiving $700,000 (£563,850) in funding.
The firm, which aims to help travel retailers access tickets to events and travel-related experiences through one single connection, will to use the money from the pre-seed round to scale its engineering team and build out its go-to-market capabilities, as well as expanding its supply and distribution network. 
With Tickitto anyone booking flights to, for example, Los Angeles would be able to buy tickets to an event at Staples Center or an LA Galaxy home game from the same platform.
The funding was arranged through early-stage investor Seedcamp which said Tickitto was on a mission to “transform the infrastructure that underpins how tickets to events and experiences are sold and distributed”.
The firm aims to disrupt the events and experiences category, which now represents the third-largest travel segment worldwide and is growing faster than the overall travel market.
Despite that, the space is highly fragmented and made up of suppliers or reservation platforms that often focus their efforts on specific genres and/or geographies.
These products also often have very little in common with each other in terms of product attributes, unlike flights and hotels, representing a significant challenge for travel retailers when it comes to actually aggregating and retailing these unrelated products online.
Tickitto, which is based in the University of Bath’s Innovation Centre, says it aims to carry out a lot of that heavy-lifting on behalf of travel retailers by standardising the infrastructure and offering configurable front-end interfaces.
The firm has already partnered up with some of the biggest names in the world of entertainment, tours and activities.
Now with Covid-19 hitting the travel industry, travel retailers are focusing on their recovery plans, including finding additional revenue streams.
Tickitto allows them to earn revenue through commission on tickets without spending large up-front development costs.
Founder and CEO Dana Lattouf, pictured, said: “The API (application programming interface) environment in this space is still in its infancy, and there is a huge opportunity for innovation in this multi-billion dollar industry.
“Tickets for theatre, music, sport and the arts can be easily overlooked during a trip but are essential to our enjoyment. In fact, it is those events and activities that motivate us to pack our bags and go. 
“One would naturally think that acquiring ticket supply is relatively straightforward and made available by plugging into an API. We realised this is not the case, and that many platforms still run on legacy infrastructure, making the integration work labour-intensive.”
She said Tickitto’s aim was to work with major ticketing platforms, sports rights holders, event organisers and experience suppliers to modernise the infrastructure and build external collaboration capabilities to scale their reach.
“This will enable us to find new ways to serve today’s modern traveller and make it simpler to deliver a connected trip experience via their preferred travel retailer’s platform,” she said.
Seedcamp investment partner Tom Wilson added: “When we first met the Tickitto team, we were amazed by their deep understanding of this space and passion for solving the problems they saw in the market.
“Spending more time with the team, it is clear they have the founder-market fit that we look for. We are excited to lead Tickitto’s pre-seed round and support them on their mission to transform the infrastructure that underpins how tickets to events and experiences are sold and distributed.”
