Travel tech provider Snowfall is in the process of purchasing PSNGR1, the online booking tool whose future was cast into doubt in June amid a funding shortfall.
Stefan Cars, CEO of UK-based Snowfall Travel, told BTN Europe that “the final pieces are being put in place” and an announcement is “very imminent”.
Cars said an online booking tool was “very much a part of our roadmap” and that Snowfall “instantly jumped on it” when they heard about the US company’s financial difficulties. “The stars aligned for us,” he added.
“One thing led to another and we spoke with Chris [Moss, PSNGR1 founder] and agreed we shared a similar view on the market and of disruption in this space. From there the discussions have been fairly quick over the summer.”
More than 95 per cent of PSNGR1 staff will move across to Snowfall, said Cars, who declined to comment on Chris Moss’ involvement.
Cars explained that Snowfall had to date largely built its own technology offering but said he had been an admirer of PSNGR1 for some time. “We’ve been very interested in what they’re producing and we think it’s a great product. From a continuity perspective, the platform will look the same and we’re going to be integrating people and staff as one company.”
He continued: “Our respective customers are going to get the best of both worlds. We’ll add on our mass of content [to PSNGR1] which is not only air, hotel and rail, but also experiences, and we’ll add what we call ‘in tune, on time’ functionality... so automatic check-in solutions, boarding pass automation… the sort of things that travellers will really benefit from.”
PSNGR1 notified its TMC partners at the end of May that activity would be paused amid a funding shortfall. In the UK, they included the Focus Travel Partnership, Gray Dawes Group, Blue Cube Travel and TakeTwo Travel Solutions, all of whom had signed partnerships with the company in recent months, but none of which were understood to have customers on the platform.
One source told BTN Europe at the time that the company was “running on fumes” and that all employment was “frozen” as of May 31. Another employee writing on the Glassdoor review site claimed the company "terminated all employment via a Slack message at 8:54pm on May 31, 2022 with no further communication to the staff".