Ex-CEO of TAP has a new travel startup valued at €13 million
After leaving TAP, Antonoaldo Neves launched P2D Travel, a startup that allows social media users to sell trips.
The former CEO of TAP has a new business. After leaving the Portuguese airline, Antonoaldo Neves launched the startup P2D Travel, a kind of travel agency that enables influencers and social network users to sell trips and hotel bookings. His startup has just received an investment from Point Break Capital, which values the company at over €13 million.
“We are very honoured and excited to have the support of such a qualified investor as Point Break, who saw in P2D Travel a company with the ability to innovate and transform the global travel sales market through digital entrepreneurs acting on social media,” says Antonoaldo Neves.
P2D Travel was founded in September 2020, the month Antonoaldo Neves left TAP, following the nationalisation and exit of private shareholder David Neeleman from the Portuguese carrier’s capital.
The startup began operations in Brazil a few months later, in May 2021, when the travel sector was already showing some signs of recovery after the brutal impact of the pandemic. It already has over 1,200 partners.
Antonoaldo Neves says Uber and Shopify inspired him to create P2D Travel: “We created the Shopify of tourism, but we went beyond, as with just a mobile phone we empowered people to become digital entrepreneurs on social media to sell trips.”
Investment boosts growth in Portugal
P2D Travel says that the partners are digital entrepreneurs and travel agents who have access to a sales platform that removes from the company all the weight of the back office related to travel sales, so that they can target their own efforts in social media promotion.
With the investment (whose value is undisclosed) from Point Break Capital, a fund that manages over four billion in assets, Antonoaldo Neves intends to boost the startup’s growth by enabling new marketing tools for P2D Travel partners to promote travel on social media.
In addition, according to the new company, the private equity fund’s investment will speed up the process of recruiting partners and travel agents in Brazil and Portugal, where it already operates today, as well as starting its international expansion with the creation of a centre in Mexico, where it has just recruited the team to begin operations, paving the way to then enter the US market.