TravelPerk is to acquire the UK-based corporate travel sustainability consultancy firm Susterra. The acquisition continues a spending spree which has seen the travel management platform buy Click Travel in the UK and NexTravel in the US.
Susterra, founded by environmental scientist James Dent, uses data analytics technology to offer companies a holistic view of their entire business travel-related environmental impact, covering flights, hotels, car hire, and rail travel.
The acquisition follows TravelPerk’s $160 million Series D funding round earlier this year, which brought the total investment raised for the platform to $294 million. The platform is backed by investors such as DST, Kinnevik, Target Global, Felix Capital, Greyhound Capital, Spark Capital, Heartcore, LocalGlobe, Amplo and 14W.
Dent will join TravelPerk as a sustainability data analyst to help further develop the company’s sustainability product offering. Susterra’s technology will be integrated with TravelPerk’s existing GreenPerk carbon offsetting offering.
“The path to more sustainable business practices starts with visibility," said Dent. “Increasingly, businesses do want to take the right steps to reduce their carbon footprint, but they are unsure of what actions they can take to make a positive impact.”
Ross McNairn, TravelPerk’s chief product officer, said, “The meetings that matter will always happen in person so companies will always need their employees to travel in order to meet customers, prospects and teams face to face. That said there is massive demand from our clients to enable these meetings with the lowest possible impact on the environment. It's for this reason that we are investing heavily in helping our clients get a true representation of their footprint so that they can consciously take mitigating action both through TravelPerk and their own programmes. Sustainability is a long game and we want to be leaders in this transition.”