Skift Travel News Blog

Corporate travel agency TripActions this week secured $400 million in credit facilities from Goldman Sachs and Silicon Valley Bank, which it said it will use to “accelerate the expansion of its customer base.”

The credit facilities consist of a warehouse debt facility from Goldman Sachs Bank USA, as the senior lender and administrative agent, with a $200 million commitment ($300M total program limit) and an asset-backed lending facility of $100 million led by Silicon Valley Bank.

TripActions said the warehouse facility will enable the continued growth of its corporate card and expense management solution, TripActions Liquid. “With this new warehouse facility from Goldman Sachs, TripActions Liquid is well positioned to support its customers while continuing to innovate at a rapid pace,” said executive vice president Michael Sindicich, head of TripActions Liquid, in a statement.

The corporate travel agency’s latest financial dealings follow October’s raising of more than $300 million. That involved a combination of $154 million in equity from new and existing financial investors, plus a $150 million structured capital transaction led by Coatue.

The company also last month bought Spain’s Atlanta Events & Corporate Travel Consultants, its fourth acquisition in 18 months.

Meanwhile, there’s still no news on a potential initial public offering to further fund the business.

If you’d thought Silicon Valley’s TripActions was running out of steam as we head towards the year’s end, after its acquisitions and extensive fundraising, think again.

On Tuesday the corp travel startup announced its fourth acquisition in 18 months, buying Spain’s Atlanta Events & Corporate Travel Consultants.

The rationale, according to the company, is because of an increase in demand for conferences, on-sites and offsites.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The purchase was made by TripActions’ premium-travel brand, Reed & Mackay, which it itself bought back in 2021. Atlanta was also a long-standing partner of Reed & Mackay.

Reed & Mackay’s meetings and events division’s employee base has grown fivefold, year-over-year, the company added.

This acquisition fills a gap in Europe, after it previously bought Comtravo in Germany and Resia in Sweden.

Atlanta has offices in Andalucia, Barcelona and Madrid, and all 70 employees will transfer over.

There’s a reshuffle taking place, as corporate travel agencies battle it out against each other for business coming out of the pandemic. Now TripActions claims it has secured one of its biggest enterprise customers to date, poaching the consumer goods giant from a major rival.

The startup said it has been selected by London-headquartered Unilever, which has nearly 150,000 employees in 77 countries, to “modernize and optimize” its travel program.

Rival American Express Global Business Travel recently revealed it had secured JP Morgan as a new client, while the CEO of Australia’s CTM claimed it had returned to profit thanks in part to winning customers from its rivals.

TripActions said its selection was linked to Unilever’s “future-fit” program, which is designed to help its employees “adapt to the impact of evolving technologies and ways of working.”

Unilelver, which has 400 brands, also wanted to make its employees more aware of their carbon emissions when traveling, TripActions claimed.

“Unilever is committed to ensuring that our employees are empowered with the right technology and lean processes that help them to thrive in this highly digital future of work,” said Mithlesh Singh, Unilever’s global travel process, employee experience and transformation manager.

Not only is business travel back with some ferocity, how people travel for business — and indeed leisure — has changed. Amongst the most fascinating changes has been which departments within companies are now traveling and how that compares to pre-pandemic makeup of business travelers.

Based on latest data from the corporate travel agency TripActions across its network of clients, the conventional idea around who travels for business (a majority used to be sales teams) has shifted and is now more distributed, especially among engineering, product, and marketing teams.   

Engineers, who made up just 7% of travelers by job function pre-pandemic, are now at a 13% share. Marketing and Product teams have similarly increased their respective share of travelers.

Meanwhile, Operations, HR, and Finance & Administrative departments, which continued to travel during the peak of the pandemic, have settled back into their pre-pandemic share.

What accounts for this change? The distributed workforce: employees who travel to their own offices or other offsite location to meet with coworkers to build in-person relationships. This bears out the thesis in the essay I wrote last month called “The Great Merging” on the new state of how people live, work, and travel have merged into each other.

Corporate travel agency TripActions is looking to secure more funds, according to Bloomberg.

It said the startup was looking towards a $9 billion valuation.

The startup is reportedly in talks for a new round of funding at a higher valuation because investors are more keen on private technology companies due to the declining value of publicly-traded shares.

There’s also interest because travel is rebounding at a faster than expected rate.

Bloomberg said a spokesperson for TripActions declined to comment.

TripActions raised $275 million in October from investors including Greenoaks Capital Management, Base Partners and entrepreneur Elad Gil, giving it a $7.25 billion valuation.