Festicket, an online platform that offers a single place for booking music festival tickets, nearby hotel rooms and transport links, has announced the closure of a €520,000 ($680,000) funding round today.
The investment came from early-stage investment fund KIMA Ventures, as well as Windcrest Partners and Jacques-Antoine Granjon, CEO of Vente-Privee.
The difference with Festicket is that it focuses on selling travel packages to its users, rather than individual festival or concert tickets. It’s a lucrative market, but one that makes a lot of sense given what’s needed to travel abroad to a festival like Pukkelpop in Belgium or Peninsula Félsziget in Romania.
The service was launched eight months ago by its founders, Zack Sabban and Jonathan Younes, and has now partnered with more than 40 festivals across Europe, including Tomorrowland in Belgium and Latitude in the UK. Festicket then completely refreshed its site in November to make navigation and payments easier.
Festicket says it will use the new investment to accelerate its European growth strategy, improve its core product and ramp up both its sales and marketing efforts.
“This raise will fuel the growth of our commercial business expansion, help to hire top talent and execute our distribution strategy,” Sabban added.
The company hopes to have over 100 different festival offers available on its website by the end of the year. Festicket is also trying to develop new partnerships with online travel agencies, travel operators, media companies, festival-related websites, and student blogs.
The service recently launched a new service for its festival partners which enables them to offer Festicket packages directly from their own website. The white-label integration has already been implemented by Camden Crawl festival, Roskilde – the famous open-air festival held in Denmark – as well as Monegros Desert Festival in Spain and Gnaoua in Morocco.
For users, the Festicket platform is incredibly simple to navigate. Once you’ve signed up for an account, either via your Facebook profile or email address, you’ll be shown a list of festivals sorted by price and name.
Music festivals are often thought of as a summer escapade, yet even in March, the website had 89 packages available for me to look at.
Prices are summarized into a single unit, displayed in euros, and can also be shared to Facebook, Twitter or Google+. So if you fancy travelling for a new music festival experience this year, but you’re not sure where to start, Festicket is a good option.
Here’s hoping that it can expand into other markets outside of Europe sooner, rather than later.
Image Credit: ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.