Online travel management company, TapTrip has today announced the company has grown exponentially as it continues to originate innovative solutions and drive efficiencies in the business travel market.
The disruptive start-up is leading the charge by doing things differently, providing better travel management technology and platforms, saving businesses both time and money and, more importantly keeping key essential workers moving, even during the current climate.
The Manchester-based company, which has recently been shortlisted for ‘Best Startup of the Year’ at the Travolution Awards, was founded by Neil Ruth (Skyscanner, Addison Lee, IHG), Thomas Young (Booking.com) and Jack Timblin (Sky Betting & Gaming) in 2018, has grown from six to 20 people since March 2020 and opened new offices in London and Romania, despite the overall downturn in global travel.
In two years TapTrip has raised £2.7million from investors including Barclays, Techstars, Startup Funding Club and some of the biggest names in Travel including easyJet and ATPI – a world-leading corporate travel and events solution provider to the shipping, energy, offshore and sports sectors.
The business model is simple; “Make enforcing travel policies, expense tracking and managing best value business travel as easy as using Netflix’. Through TapTrip, their travel management partners are able to offer ALL clients including SMEs a smarter, more immersive and user-friendly Cloud-based online booking tool (with a bit of fun thrown in) – and so increase customer service, satisfaction and employee acquisition and retention.
Neil Ruth, COO at TapTrip said: “I am delighted to say that TapTrip has remained on its growth trajectory despite the recent challenges being experienced by the global travel industry. That’s because we’re offering smart efficient solutions for businesses that just make sense – a better service that costs less. Simple.
“Our pipeline of travel management companies has grown rapidly as many have realised that the online model we use for travel is far more defensible against future challenges we may face. The travel industry is struggling, so we adapted our service offering to help keep the industry moving, we integrated a live chat functionality into TapTrip, allowing for the human touch through tech, which is needed at a time of such uncertainty.”
Thomas Young, CEO at TapTrip added: “And it’s not just our client base that is growing, our team is growing too, and we are delighted to be working alongside the team at Salford University and Northcoders who are training up some of the most skilled developers we’ve seen.”
In September, TapTrip strengthened its developer team by recruiting three new developers to join their team of talented tech heads. Diana Salyte joined TapTrip as product owner and will be driving consistency across the company, liaising between the development team and wider stakeholders.
Caitlin Bishop joined TapTrip as a junior software engineer from WorldPay where she worked as payments controller and Katie Raby joined TapTrip as a junior software engineer who after a career change at 27 will use her background in marketing to create accessible interfaces which focus on the end user, the customer.
Katie is also runs a Girls Who Code club in her local community for girls aged between 11-17 and on a mission to close the gender gap in technology.
Caitlin and Katie were hired through TapTrip’s partnership with Northcoders, a company which is helping to showcase the best talent in the technology sector, whilst smashing down stereotypes within an industry which is generally male led.
Josh Gray, Head of DevAccelerator at Northcoders said: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with TapTrip, a company which takes so much pride in showcasing some the best talent we have within the UK tech sector and despite the troubles we are all facing as a result of Covid-19, it’s great to see a company like TapTrip continuing to grow and provide opportunities within this sector.”
