Endacott invests in Trending Travel and joins the board as a Non-Exec Director.

Fast-growing influencer platform Trending Travel announced today that Travel Industry Entrepreneur Steve Endacott has decided to invest a substantial sum in the business as part of its latest ￡500k “Crowdfunding” investment round, valuing the business at ￡4m.

?Trending Travel CEO Keith Herman commented “It took me 12 holes of golf to convince Steve to open his chequebook to invest and join our journey as a non-Exec director. Trending Travel is one of Europe’s fastest-growing social media travel businesses and provides a successful route in consumer acquisition outside of Google. We are excited to bring somebody with Steve’s travel experience and contacts onto our board.”

?Endacott will take responsibility for shaping Trending Travels technology platform, as well as helping to recruit new industry trade partnerships and develop relationships with tourist boards.

?Endacott commented “Working with Keith and the Trending Travel team during negotiations of the Travel Solutions Network (TSN) homeworker sales support deal, opened my eyes to what a low-cost route to customer acquisition that the guys have developed. The customer reach Trending Travels influencer network has and the volume of leads their activity generates truly amazed me and made me realise what an exciting new route for attracting travel bookers Trending Travel had developed”.

?Trending Travel regards itself as an “Inspirational” travel site that uses unique and crucially authentic content to engage with consumers via Instagram, TikTok and Facebook as primary channels. Trending Travel creates travel desire, along with a clear call to action to purchase these trips, to the destination or hotels being promoted.

?Trending Travel has its own ATOL licence allowing it to dynamically package holidays to partner hotels or enter into agency agreements with bonded Tour operators.

?Herman commented “Trending Travel is unusual in that it has a two-pronged strategy encompassing pure Media promotion and/or combining it with direct holiday Sales. ?We deliver unique media focused collaborations with our suppliers to generate demand for our partner's destinations and/or hotels. This demand is generic and is either fulfilled directly via our sales agents or drives “halo” sales via the partner websites and/or high street travel agency shops. ?

?Demand is normally for individual holidays, but Trending Travel is also creating group events with over 200 plus attendees. The Trending Travel brand is about providing Inspiration via our influencers as to what is hot and what is not, in the travel landscape.”

?Endacott commented “Trending Travel clearly has the capability to be a great “Flash Sell” site, but this categorising ignores its “Inspirational” capabilities in an OTA space which demands that their customers choose a destination, date, and hotel type before they even know what is available. Trending Travel users its influencer's video content to create demand and inspire customers to choose a destination. This directional selling capability is highly attractive to tourist boards, tour operators and hotel operators as Trending Travels demand is focused on partners’ products and not fragmented by search options offering everything under the sun”.

?Trending Travel has already raised ￡320,000 from a Crowdfunding round, which has another 20 days until the ?13th May closing date.

?Herman commented “We are highly confident of reaching our second funding target of ￡500k and have agreed to allow over funding to ￡800k before closing fundraising at our current ￡4m valuations. The value of Trending Travel is only going in one direction, and it will be an exciting ride for investors and management alike. Our initial focus remains on travel, but investors are already asking us which business verticals are next.”

?Endacott added, “I think this is one of my most exciting investments and I’m happy to recommend it to any individual who understands that Google’s stranglehold on travel advertising is doomed by the explosion of social channels that provide an alternate route for travel marketing.”