Solo founder Cat Jones decided to launch a travel business around the time the pandemic hit Europe in March 2020. Fast forward to the summer of 2024, and her curated package tour business, Byway, is announcing the closing of an oversubscribed Series A round of funding of £5.04 million (about $6.4 million at current exchange rates).
Jones is a firm believer that slower, more sustainable travel — skipping planes and travelling by land (and sea) by train, bus and ferry, with the selling point being that vacationers can avoid crowds and enjoy the scenery in secluded places — is thriving. He told TechCrunch that growth has tripled year over year, with more than 4,200 trips sold so far.
Environmental concerns are one of the big drivers as holidaymakers try to find ways to fly less, while many of Europe’s favourite city break destinations, from Amsterdam and Barcelona to Rome and Venice – and even some of the more famous holiday islands – are less welcoming to tourists as local communities struggle with the effects of overtourism.
These two trends were on Jones’ mind when he was exploring startup ideas after working as an investor at the London-based startup accelerator Founders Factory and before that, he spent 10 years at digital ad tech company Unruly, ultimately serving on the company’s executive team as global SVP of data.
Her UK-based startup now has 40 employees. The Series A funding, led by Heartcore Capital with participation from Eka Ventures and Reinvestment Angels, will be used to expand into new geographies. The company said it plans to hire more people, including engineers, as it ramps up investment in its proprietary artificial intelligence-based trip planner technology.
Currently, the majority of package trips Byway sells (about 60%) are booked online, with customers using the company’s proprietary trip-design software, JourneyAI. The remaining 40% of sales are made through a human-powered concierge service, where staff talk to prospective buyers and design trips to fit their needs. But Jones is confident that by connecting more data sources and optimizing its AI recommendations, the company’s vacation planner tool could take over much of the trip-design work.
Fun, but restorative
Jones herself has always preferred slower, more scenic travel, having taken ferries to Ireland to visit family and being a lifelong train enthusiast who has never owned a car, so she saw a real opportunity to design a “gorgeous” overland trip that would combine spectacular scenery and exciting travel experiences, whether that be the thrill of a ferry or a mountain railway, or the slow-paced novelty of a dining car sleeper train.
Multi-destination road trips change the rhythm of travel and create opportunities for a different type of tourism that is more environmentally friendly than air travel. They also spread economic benefits across more places and reduce pressure on tourist destinations. But planning these trips is complicated, which is why Byway’s AI tools are such a key component in scaling this alternative package tour business.
So how do Byway’s trip planners know what trips to recommend to each user? Jones says the tool uses a number of sources and context to create packages, including transit timetables and fare information, as well as information provided by the customers themselves. The AI also references information about Byway’s previous popular trips. In effect, the company’s AI aims to match customers with similar previously satisfied travelers.
As an example of the level of detail and context that Byway deals with, she points out that a vacationing couple might love the idea of a late-night sleeper train, but a family with kids probably wouldn’t be thrilled by the prospect. “You have to be very sensitive,” she says, emphasizing that a big part of the work involved in designing the tool is trying to navigate and sort through essentially all kinds of travel-related “nuances.”
The tool can also be used in a few different ways: Customers looking for ideas for where to go can simply enter some basic information, like the length of their vacation, and get initial vacation suggestions, such as a week-long trip through the French countryside, or a three-week trip across Europe to Turkey and back via Budapest and Vienna.
Or they could take inspiration from the pre-planned trips featured on the Byway website to customise the suggested packages to better suit their needs.The 60% online booking figure thus seems to testify both to the relevance of the AI’s suggestions and the level of adaptability it already offers.
The technology also helps with the second big challenge of multi-leg journeys: that an interruption anywhere along the way can result in the journey being cut short. Jones says JourneyAI manages this risk of interruptions by designing for resilience, and the software factors in fallback options, providing alternative plans if original plans fall through.
“Right now we’re still sorting out disruptions manually. But actually, thanks to this funding, we’ll soon be able to automate a large part of the disruption detection and automatic replanning of disruptions,” she says. “That way we can alert people and say, ‘Your trip is disrupted here. Your train is a little late. You’re going to miss your connection. Here’s the part we’ve rescheduled for you. And yes, of course, you can consult with us if you want. But actually, if you’re happy with that, we’ll accept it and we’ll go.”
As another alternative, Byway has set up a WhatsApp group for its customers to make it easier to stay in touch while they’re travelling so they don’t feel like they have to deal with issues themselves.
“We sell complete holidays, which means if there’s any confusion when a customer is buying from us, it’s our fault. We’ll sort it out, we’ll sort it out. This makes it easy for customers to make a decision.” [purchase the trip]”If there’s a problem, Byway just contacts me and says, ‘OK, here’s the disruption. Here’s how we’ll deal with it. While you’re waiting, go get some ice cream from so-and-so’,” she added, emphasizing.
“But, of course, it also puts a new imperative on our technology to design routes that are not only really fun but that have some degree of disruption resistance.”
For transport ticket bookings, it’s common to integrate with APIs provided by third-party aggregators such as Swedish startup All Aboard, she says. Accommodation bookings are also part of the commodity. The core IP is an itinerary planner tool.
“We are not an agency, we are a tour operator,” she emphasizes. “As a tour operator, we can buy accommodation and transport at transactional prices, which means we don’t expect a minuscule commission that we have to make every penny count and negotiate directly in every case…” [It] It means we can focus our technology on JourneyAI, which is really smart. So we can spend most of our time doing things that no one has done before.”
Bringing human expertise into the loop
While the majority of Byway’s customers use the company’s technology tools to plan and book their trips, many still prefer a human agent to help them plan their vacations. Travelers with the most specialized needs may find the automated suggestions aren’t specific enough, while others prefer to have a human they can talk to involved in the planning process.
Still, Jones is optimistic that her team can continue to improve the AI’s responsiveness and increase the percentage of trips booked via tech tools. When TechCrunch asked how much better the AI’s recommendations could get, she offered with playful enthusiasm: “It could be perfect!” “That’s what we’re investing in and that’s why we’re raising capital.”
“In many cases, our technicians do a really great job,” she continued, now in a more serious tone, “in fact, the vast majority of the time, they do a really great job, but there are still 40% of cases where we have to leave it to a human because they just can’t handle it.
“We have a general model that has nuances specific to certain regions, but as we expand into more regions, JourneyAI’s technology will need more region-specific nuances. But we’re kind of in a situation where we’re like, ‘Oh, I get it. I already know that I need this, I need this, I need this.’ Actually, our biggest problem is that we don’t have many developers… We have a back-end roadmap for JourneyAI, but we don’t have enough back-end technologists to execute on that roadmap as quickly as we’d like. It’s the same with the front-end… That’s why we’re raising this capital.”
She also asserts that it’s up to humans to find quality content to inform the AI’s recommendations. To that end, Byway’s product liaison team works with local “destination management organizations,” she said. In areas it’s unfamiliar with, it asks local journalists to help build “a real data quality layer,” she said.
“The byway can’t take you to every place you could dream of, but the places it can take you are places you chose for a reason,” she added.
Meanwhile, Byway is preparing for regional expansion and the team is busy with more mundane tasks, such as resolving Brexit-related regulatory issues.
“We’re kind of on a regulatory journey right now,” she said, explaining that because the UK decided to leave the European Union, UK-held bonds can no longer span Europe, which is why Byway based in the Netherlands. “To get a European bond that protects European clients, you need a European company. So that’s basically the next step. Once we have that, we can actually start marketing to Europe.”
The report has been updated with a revision to the amount of funds raised.
