Klarna, a global retail bank, payments and shopping service, is bringing its signature experience to the travel sector with the acquisition of Inspirock, an online trip planner that enables consumers to explore a destination’s offerings and “create personalized itineraries utilizing local expertise and artificial intelligence.”
More than 25 million travelers a year are reportedly using Inspirock to plan trips “tailored to their interests or find inspiration on where to go and what to see.”
Klarna will integrate Inspirock’s capabilities to “allow Klarna’s 90M users to plan and shop for a trip and pay for it in installments – all through the Klarna app,” according to a release.
In addition, Klarna aims to “save its customers hours of planning for the typical vacation by using Inspirock’s technology,” the announcement noted.
Klarna CEO and Co-Founder, Sebastian Siemiatkowski stated:
“By bringing Inspirock to Klarna, we are bringing the best of Klarna’s smoooth customer experience to the travel sector. For customers, this makes the whole journey from inspiration to planning and preparing for a trip simpler, less stressful and more fun, while enabling our retail partners to better reach and engage with their audiences by offering more personalized content. It’s a natural extension of the benefits Klarna brings to payments and shopping.”
Inspirock’s tech also enables Klarna to provide additional advertising and marketing opportunities to its growing network of 250,000+ retail partners, “helping them to reach high-intent shoppers with more curated and personalized content catered to their travel plans and preferences.”
Anoop Goyal, CEO and Co-Founder of Inspirock remarked:
“We are excited to bring simpler, easier trip planning to Klarna’s 90m global consumers. Our goal at Inspirock has been to make planning a trip fast, fun and easy. Together we can deliver on Klarna’s ambitions of providing a smooth shopping experience to the travel space in an innovative way. Klarna and Inspirock together can bring great inspiration, tools and shopping experiences, making planning the trip as fun as the actual trip itself.”
Klarna’s marketing solutions include Comparison Shopping, an AI-enhanced styling engine, a virtual shopping platform, and an influencer marketing and measurement platform. Together, these services will “help consumers make informed decisions about purchasing the products they want from the retailers they love at the best price.”
Travel is a large digital commerce market with steady predicted growth. 66% of global travel bookings are made online and this is on track to expand “to 72% by 2025, creating a market worth a projected $833 billion.”
As Covid-19 restrictions begin to ease in many regions and travel plans are back, Klarna research has shown that “21% of people put travel at the top of their list of categories they are going to splurge on in 2021.”