[ad_1]
Travel startup Laila – backed by capital from firstminute, M13, Booking.com co-founder Andy Phillips, Skyscanner co-founder Barry Smith and Paris Hilton – announced today that it has acquired an itinerary creation robot powered by ‘AI. Wander. Layla did not disclose the value of the transaction.
Roam Around was founded last year by Shie Gabbai, a former Google employee who worked on Waze. The company raised $1 million from investors like FLYR.com and Jason Calacanis. As part of the deal, Roam Around’s five-person team joins Layla. To date, Roam Around has built 10 million routes and half a million people visit its site every month.
Laila launched publicly last year with its AI-powered bot that helps users plan their trips by fetching knowledge from different sources like Booking.com and Skyscanner. Jeremy Jauncey, founder of travel agency Beautiful Destinations, is co-founder of the startup. That’s why Layla takes advantage of a vast library of content from travel creators to show users unique views and clips when they’re searching for a place to visit.
Saad Saeed, co-founder of Layla, said the company believes Roam Around complements Layla’s product with its itinerary-building projects and partnerships such as TripAdvisor, Kayak, Viator and GetYourGuide.
“Roam Around is truly the fastest growing travel AI startup. They have really exploded with their entire itinerary product and gained a lot of popularity with customers. We’ve had a lot of success with social media, so we really complemented each other’s strengths,” he said in a call with TechCrunch.
“We focused a lot on the best flight prediction models, hotels, partnerships with Skyscanner and Booking.com. Whereas they focused a lot on itineraries incorporating Viator and all the restaurants. So the idea was simply to bring together the best of both worlds.
Layla has already started integrating the Roam Around product. So users can get better route data when using Layla. On the other hand, Layla also placed her bot on the Roam Around site.
Image credits: Wander
Saeed said the startup will phase out the Roam Around brand and fully integrate it with Layla.
Travel startups, including Kayak and Expedia launched GPT plugins. Meanwhile, Matador Network’s GuideGeek tool displays flight details in real time. Just like Layla, Matador wants to integrate influencer videos into the results. In India, navigation company MapMyIndia has backed a startup named Whowhich attempts to create an AI-based product to help users with their travel experiences while focusing on localizing the experience.
[ad_2]