Culture Trip operates a travel and culture publishing platform built on contributions from a global network of paid writers, photographers and videographers. The site emphasizes editorial travel writing and multimedia rather than directly selling travel services, and it runs an AI-based recommendation engine to surface related stories. Recent traction includes 15 million unique visitors, 850,000 app downloads, a 400% increase in story traffic over four months, and video views up 4,000%. The company works with roughly 300 paid contributors, has published about 75,000 articles since 2011, and is producing around 3,000 articles per month. Culture Trip intentionally runs ad-free posts today and plans to monetize via branded content, partnerships and links to bookable travel services and local experiences. Management has begun hiring sales and product executives to build out these monetization plans and partnerships with providers like Airbnb and Hotels.com. Culture Trip is a London-based media startup that has published more than 30,000 articles and videos offering cultural, travel and food recommendations. The company operates offices in London, New York and Tel Aviv and accepts content from over 40 additional country hubs. Culture Trip was founded by Dr. Kris Naudts and combines editorial content with a technology stack it describes as a bespoke knowledge graph using AI to deepen personalisation. The company raised $20M in a Series A led by PPF Group and had previously raised $2M in seed funding from various investors including Gordy Crawford, for total capital of $22M to date. Management says the Series A will be used to invest heavily in its technology and to expand the company’s presence in new hubs around the world. Culture Trip plans to further develop its personalization technology and continue expanding its content offering.

Total raised

$100M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Apr 2018