Liverpool traveltech startup digitaltravel.io is celebrating its third birthday with the news it has quadrupled in size financially since launch, posting over £1m annual revenue in its third year, up from £250k in its first 12 months of operation.
The company, which provides digital travel solutions to travel and tourism businesses, with a particular focus on cruises, was established through the merger of Peter Whittle’s CruiseAppy, a mobile app platform for the cruise industry and Peter Aland’s iprogress, a web design and development agency.
The merged offer has created a scalable, integrated bespoke app and website platform with customer engagement features powered by world-class travel data and content that have become the choice for a growing number of cruise and travel agents worldwide.
The company’s increase in annual sales is one of several milestones digitaltravel.io is marking in 2024. Founded during the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, digitaltravel.io has bootstrapped its growth from a team of five to employing 14 people with 67 clients, 59% of whom are overseas.
To accommodate its burgeoning team, the company has also doubled its office space within the city’s Cotton Exchange.
CEO and co-founder Whittle said: “We saw a gap in the market and established digitaltravel.io to build a business that not only stands out for the quality of what it achieves, but for the way in which it innovates and builds long standing relationships with its clients. Three years on, because of a talented team, loyal clients and strong partnerships, we have exceeded our expectations.
“As a startup we have reached ‘base camp’ and are now investing in people and processes to help grow the business still further along with the scalability of our platform.”
digitaltravel.io now has an international customer base across the EU, Americas and APAC regions and boasts a 98% client retention rate, supported by a strategic partnership with globally renowned travel technology provider, Traveltek. Among its clients are some of the biggest brands in the sector: Hays Travel, Imagine Cruising and Flight Centre.
Whittle added: “We’ve fuelled our £1m in annual revenue by creating long-term partnerships with many of our clients by agreeing ongoing monthly contracts for not only support and maintenance, but guaranteed development resource to provide a mutually beneficial partnership of response, focus, resource and delivery for our clients while giving us the confidence to invest further with guaranteed revenue streams.
“Our growth has been underpinned by key staff appointments and a series of innovative strategies that have made a huge difference in the marketplace.”
In 2021 digitaltravel.io was recognised at the industry-leading Travolution awards in the Best Technology Provider category, and in 2023 and 2024, the company was named in the Tech Climbers list of top scalable, innovative and product-led technology businesses across Liverpool City Region.
