Transavia and travel diary tool Travel Diaries are joining forces

A better way to record trips
Travel Diaries is the solution for travelers who want to record their trips in a pleasant and accessible way and save them for later moments. The innovative software, in which you can add stories, photos and route maps in different layouts, makes you feel like you are in a real diary on your screen. Each chapter can be shared digitally as a blog and when the online diary is completed, you can order it as a printed A5 book with a hard or soft cover. The start-up wants to grow from the current 65,000 global users to 1 million in a short time.
 

The travel diary tool was founded by travel journalist Veerle Witte, who has been traveling the world for five years for titles such as National Geographic Traveler. Witte: 'With Travel Diaries I wanted to develop a better way to capture travel memories. Photo book software often does not offer options for sharing, adding route maps or posting long, continuous texts. Blog websites and apps do not always offer the option to order a printed book or creative freedom in its layout. Travel Diaries brings the best of these two worlds together. Now we are ready for professionalization, and Transavia Ventures BV is exactly the partner we were looking for.'

Work on your diary anytime, anywhere in the world
Nico Gielen, Investment Lead of Transavia Ventures, says about this new collaboration: 'Travel Diaries is a perfect example of a start-up with a very good team, some turnover already achieved and a product with a lot of potential. We are therefore happy to help with further scaling up.' With the investment, Travel Diaries will, among other things, further develop current technology and build a mobile app for iOS and Android so that users can work on their diary anytime, anywhere in the world - even offline. The intention is to make this app widely available at the upcoming Vakantiebeurs in January 2020.

In addition, the start-up will launch a 'white label' next year, making the unique diary software available for rent to travel organizations, as it were. These can offer the Travel Diaries editor, with their own branding, to their travelers and publish the resulting content on their own website. Witte: 'With the white label, travel organizations extend their customer journey and encourage their customers to write stories about their travel experiences. Ultimately, organizations build a community of customers who inspire each other with stories, photos, tips and travel routes. In addition, it generates a large flow of new website visitors – and potential bookers – as users share their stories with friends and family.'

Commercial strength of Transavia
One of the first potential white label customers may be Transavia itself. Erik-Jan Gelink, Chief Commercial Officer Transavia Airlines, says: 'We started Transavia Ventures BV to generate new sources of income using, for example, Transavia's commercial strength. Promoting Travel Diaries to 10 million passengers can of course be a huge stimulus for the growth of this start-up, which is probably much more valuable than our direct investment.'

But there are many more plans in the pipeline. Witte: 'By making the more than 100,000 travel stories of our users easier to find and supplementing them with quality content from our blogging team, Travel Diaries should grow into the largest travel inspiration platform in the Netherlands – and beyond. There are tremendous opportunities and challenges ahead, and we are 100 percent ready to take them on.”

More about Travel Diaries? surf to   www.traveldiariesapp.com . Start-ups interested in funding from Transavia Ventures can find more information here   www.transavia.com/ventures .