To lead the digitalization of business travel and enhance its artificial intelligence offering. With this objective, the scale-up BizAway, founded between Italy and Barcelona, has acquired Aervio, one of the main corporate travel management agencies in Spain, with offices in the Catalan capital and Madrid.
Founded in 2016, Aervio has been a pioneer in the development of artificial intelligence-based solutions to optimize business travel planning. With this integration, BizAway aims to incorporate these AI tools to offer an even more efficient and personalized corporate travel management platform. The operation also foresees that eight Aervio employees will join the BizAway team, which has eight offices spread across Italy, Spain, Albania, and the United Arab Emirates.
For BizAway, this operation represents "a significant advance" in the growth strategy of the company, which serves companies in more than 27 countries. "In a constantly changing sector like business travel, artificial intelligence represents a key opportunity," said Luca Carlucci, its CEO and co-founder. The operation, whose amount has not been disclosed, comes at a time of growth for BizAway, which in September 2024 raised a 35 million euro funding round with Mayfair Equity Partners.
However, Carlucci emphasized that the application of these technologies must also be accompanied by optimal customer service. Thus, the company will not only invest in these new digital tools but also in strengthening its customer assistance, to "offer a competent service close to the real needs of companies and travelers," as its CEO highlighted.
BizAway was founded in 2015 by Carlucci and Flavio Del Bianco after detecting that, although more and more business trips were being made, there was no comprehensive platform that allowed them to be organized quickly and easily. Thus, they created a tool that allows not only booking flights and accommodation ---at a more economical price--- but also controlling the costs and invoicing associated with them, which are currently used by more than 1,600 companies worldwide.