Tour Booking Startup ZOZI Raises $30 Million From Richard Branson, Others To Expand Its Reservation Platform

ZOZI, a startup that hooks merchants up with those seeking travel experiences using proprietary software, has closed on $30 million in Series C funding.

Pritzker Vlock Ventures led the round, with participation from Sir Richard Branson, Par Capital Ventures, 500 Startups, Dolby Family Ventures and Bridge Bank also participated.

Despite what it says on Crunchbase, ZOZI raised $15 million in previous rounds, bringing the total up to $45 million in funds to date.

Travel and tourism is a large industry with a lot of players in the space – even among those offering discounts and deals. There are an estimated 1.7 million businesses dedicated to travel and tourism worldwide, according to IbisWorld research.

ZOZI targets a similar market to those buying from Groupon Getaways or HipMunk for travel and tourism deals, but it works a bit more like OpenTable or Eventbrite for event booking. Merchants pay ZOZI a monthly subscription fee for the software and a small transaction fee is charged to customers during the online booking process.

ZOZI acquired real-time reservation system TripFlavor in 2013 and has been building out its reservation SaaS offerings for merchants on the platform since that time.

This new round of funding will allow the startup to continue expansion to more merchants on ZOZI Advance, the reservations, payments and customer management software portion of the platform, and ZOZI.com, the startup’s marketplace for activities and getaways. , particularly those catering to millennials. This is a section of the market that is often characterized as wanting experiences over things and ZOZI hopes to capitalize on that.

ZOZI believes this two-part platform will be instrumental to those businesses catering to experiences, particularly among millennials. This is a section of the market often characterized as wanting experiences over things and ZOZI hopes to capitalize on that.

“Finally, the revolution is coming to the experiences market,” ZOZI founder TJ Sassani said. “We’re seeing incredible momentum. Our vision is that ZOZI Advance will power every activity business worldwide, making ZOZI.com the largest real-time experiences marketplace.”