Tripsta S.A. is the parent company of tripsta, airtickets and travelplanet24, online travel agencies that provide transportation services—including airlines, ferry and train - through their websites.[1]
Tripsta S.A. operates in over 45 countries and territories and in over 34 languages.[2]
Tripsta S.A. was founded in 2005, originally under the brand name travelplanet24, by Philipp Brinkmann (CEO) and Kristof Keim (CCO) in Athens, Greece.[3] In 2010, Tripsta S.A. was formed in response to European expansion.[4]
By 2010, Tripsta S.A. entered its first foreign market (Poland) and by 2015 expanded to forty-five additional markets.[5]
In 2014, the company received 3.5 million EUR in funding for growth from the European Investment Fund.[6]
As of 2017, the company serves over one million customers and has gross bookings exceeding .5bn EUR.
Tripsta S.A. maintains its headquarters in Athens, Greece and has a remote office in Bucharest, Romania.[7]
Tripsta S.A. suspended operations, in particular issuance of new travel tickets in June 2018 due to a failure of its new business plan and subsequent inability to repay debts of up to 70 million euros to IATA and its members. As a result of this airtickets.gr converted its operation into a metasearch engine and travelplanet24 was restricted into selling solely ferry tickets.[8] Additionally it aimed to close down their office in Romania affecting around 100 employees.[9] Tripsta blamed partner Travelport for this outcome and initiated legal actions against it, with Travelport denying the accusations.[10] Airtickets.gr founder Dimitris Kontogeorgos publicly blamed Tripsta for failing to protect the reputation of airtickets.gr, as he claimed that Tripsta allowed its financial problems to be linked to airtickets.gr.[11]
In March 2015, Tripsta S.A. acquired and integrated its competitor airtickets®. The acquisition made Tripsta S.A. the largest ecommerce company in the country.[15] It also consolidated the technology and customer base of the two companies, presenting a wide-reaching transportation offer.[16]