[Funding alert] Aarhus-based Holdbar Secures $3.5Million in Funding

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By assembling all the tools required to develop, market, and sell experiences—such as a booking engine, payment processor, team organizer, gift card solution, and demand generator—Holdbar is attempting to change this. In order to further build the platform and make it the go-to platform for experience providers worldwide, the company has now raised a $3.5 million seed round.

Co-founder and CEO Lasse Kjaer said, “Experiences are the fastest-growing sector within the tourist and travel industry. The younger generation, in particular, is likely to prioritise experiences over things. By developing a platform that helps experience providers improve their commercial output, they can create a healthier business."

The investment round is supported by Seed Capital and Firstminute Capital. Among the new members are Toast, Inc. co-founder Steve Fredette and Christoph Deckert.

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Lasse Kjær said, “We’re incredibly excited to work with such an experienced team. Toast is one of the companies we deeply admire because they have achieved what we aim to achieve within restaurants within experiences. Together, we will continue to develop and scale our platform for experience providers to streamline and grow their business,”.

The need for experiences—both new and old—is increasing at a rapid pace, and emerging sub-verticals within the experience eco-system require the right infrastructure and tools to be successful.

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Brent Hoberman, co-founder and managing partner of Firstminute Capital, shared: "Just like Shopify did for e-commerce brands over the last decade, Holdbar provides the infrastructure to enable small businesses in the domestic tourism and experiences sector to run independently from the major OTAs. Holdbar’s tooling allows these SMEs to engage directly with their customers on whichever platforms they choose (websites, social media, messaging channels) and provide an end-to-end high-quality digital experience that reflects their brand. Over the next decade, businesses need to own their data and run their own software stack if they are going to be able to gain from AI efficiencies. We believe Holdbar can help small businesses in travel make this transition.”

About Holdbar

Holdbar are redefining the way tour guides market experiences and run their companies.
All the resources need to market trips, events, and experiences on a one platform.
covering gift cards, reservations, payments, marketing, promotions, and online sales to both individuals and groups. They streamline laborious and time-consuming administrative tasks into something that is quick to set up, intuitive to use, and effective to operate.

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