Last month EightyDays, a US startup born in Belarus, secured an undisclosed amount in a seed round of funding from Artem Lebedev. The famous Russian designer saw in this startup’s technology “an incredible, fantastic, extraordinary new way of making travel bookings online” (see video).
EightyDays has created a multi-destination booking service intended for international travellers planning a trip to Europe. Different means of transportation (airplane and train) and accommodation can be combined in a single booking process. The algorithm also integrates such factors as ticket pricing, journey duration, weather, airport-to-city distance, etc. to optimize the trip.
For multi-destination travellers, this means saving considerable time, and in many cases money, while booking multi-destination tickets.
EightyDays also brings more convenience to trips: for example, travellers won’t have to put up with long and costly transfers from airports which located far away from their cities of destination.
“The low-cost companies serving these airports usually don’t inform their customers about the unconvenient airport location and transfer details. Our algorithm simply excludes such airports,” EightyDays co-founder Aleh Tsikhanau told East-West Digital News.
Tsikhanau presented the deal with Lebedev as “a first contribution” to EightyDays’ undergoing seed round of funding. The company, which attracted some $500,000 at the pre-seed stage, now aims to raise “up to $1 million” from international investors.
