Darrin Grafton, CEO of Serko (left) and Josh Wood, Head of Global Business Travel Partnerships at Booking.com (right).
Serko announces expanded agreement with Booking.com and investment from Booking Holdings as part of capital raising to accelerate global expansion.
Serko Limited, a leader in online travel booking and expense management for business, announced that it has signed commitments with Booking.com B.V. to expand their existing agreement.
With the expanded agreement, Booking.com can offer and promote Serko Zeno to its business traveler customers and enable the integration of new Booking.com content onto Serko Zeno.
In addition, Booking Holdings Inc. (“Holdings”) is investing NZ$17.5 million in Serko as part of a NZ$45 million capital raising the company launched today to accelerate Serko’s global rollout of Zeno.
Acceleration of Zeno Growth
Following Zeno’s 2018 launch a number of major travel management company (“TMC”) partners in North America have signed reseller agreements to market and promote Zeno. High profile corporates have selected Zeno as their online booking tool, and the industry has recognized Zeno with awards such as the BTN Innovate People’s Choice.
This response has provided the market validation for Serko to support an increase in investment in Zeno. Funds raised in the capital raising will be deployed to accelerate the provisioning of Zeno into North America and continental Europe, and develop expanded content offerings for Serko’s global TMC reseller community. The capital will also be used to deliver and support the expected growth in Serko’s customer base and to support projected expansion arising from the Booking.com agreement.
Agreement with Booking.com
Concurrent with Holdings’ cornerstone investment in Serko, Booking.com has signed commitments to expand its existing agreement with Serko so that Booking.com can offer and promote Zeno to its business traveler customers.
Zeno is built around the ‘Unified Travel Experience’ concept of connecting travelers with preferred suppliers at every stage of their journey. Serko expects the expanded agreement with Booking.com to broaden and improve the ‘whole of journey’ content available in Zeno, expanding the value proposition for travelers and travel managers and creating new revenue opportunities for the TMC reseller community.
Darrin Grafton, CEO of Serko, welcomed Booking.com's expanded agreement to further empower the Travel Management community and drive the adoption of Zeno’s market-leading technology with end-to-end journey content.
Mr Grafton said: “Partnering with Booking.com introduces additional content to advance our aspiration of achieving the ‘Unified Traveller Experience’ which will deliver simplicity and compliance to corporate travellers while making our resellers more profitable."
“It is fantastic to partner with Booking.com, the world leader in online travel and related services. The Serko and Booking.com agreement will accelerate our journey toward our vision of seamless corporate travel and expanding outside of Australasia.”
Ripsy Bandourian, VP of Partnerships at Booking.com said: “We are excited to be expanding our agreement with Serko, as our vision about making business travel frictionless for both travellers and travel managers alike is very much aligned with Serko’s, and we’re looking forward to working together in bringing this solution to customers and partners outside of Australasia."
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She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
