WeTravel—an integrated booking and payments platform built to automate and optimize the operational necessitates of multi-day tour operators—announced the appointment of Ted Clements to Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and the migration of Johannes Koeppel, WeTravel’s co-founder, from CEO to the newly-created Chief Product Officer (CPO) role.
Under Koeppel’s leadership, the business’s c-suite expansion “is a resultant of consecutive, double-digit client and transaction volume growth since 2021, which led the business to $10 million ARR and a competitive Series B funding round in 2022.”
Clements stated:
“Johannes’ extraordinary vision and leadership led WeTravel to become the world’s most innovative technology platform for the underserved, often traditional group travel industry. In six years, the team grew the platform from a booking tool for student travelers to an integrated platform that handles automating and optimizing administration, marketing and payments for thousands of travel businesses, who interact and transact with half-a-million travelers. WeTravel is a paradigm of exceptional product-market fit; with Johannes’ guidance, the team has built a platform with a multitude of technology solutions that benefit all multi-day travel businesses. I look forward to supporting the business in its continued success.”
WeTravel was “built as a platform to support travel businesses by digitizing and optimizing the travel booking process.”
Now used by more than 3,000 travel companies—to transact with nearly 500,000 travelers and thousands of suppliers, annually—the business “has revolutionized how the travel industry manages their businesses with a suite of solutions that fit into an intuitive platform.”
Founded in San Francisco in 2016, the globally distributed team of nearly 150 employees now works from five continents, “represents more than 30 nationalities, with offices in Amsterdam, Azerbaijan and The United States.”
Aligned with the company’s long-term vision “to expand both its platform’s tool suite and its market share—to be the leading platform for all group travel organizers and tour operators—the developed c-suite will equally focus on innovating the product’s travel-specific functions and delivering the product to the right markets with strong sales and marketing departments.”
Koeppel remarked:
“Since the original idea for WeTravel came to my mind nearly 10 years ago, I’ve committed to building an evolving platform to support any travel organizer or tour operator in their operations. After six years of incredible success, we’re at the crux of needing both a strong product team and strategic marketing and sales guidance to push WeTravel into its next growth phase. Creating the CPO role gives me the opportunity to continue my decade-long commitment to building the platform and servicing the clients who use it; in doing so, it has opened the CEO role to Ted, who has a incredible success history of leading and scaling sales, marketing, and customer service teams in the travel industry.”
Clements, formerly FareHarbor’s COO and acting CEO, “began his travel industry career as one of FareHarbor’s first mainland US sales employees; in his years with the business, it grew to more than 700 global employees.”
In the CEO role, Clements will “manage WeTravel’s long-term strategic direction, including supporting the product and engineering teams with globally distributed sales, customer support and marketing teams, as the business aims to more than double its transaction volume in 2023, with a focus on expanding its product-market fit with enterprise clients.”
As CPO, Koeppel, who’ll also remain an active Board member, “will manage WeTravel’s product development to support the business’s vision to expand its offerings into new markets within the group travel and tour operator segments.”
Koeppel said:
“I’m thrilled to have found an incredible leader for WeTravel and devote my attention as CPO to continuing to build WeTravel’s exceptional capabilities. On behalf of the Board and my fellow Co-Founders, we’re overjoyed to appoint Ted to WeTravel’s helm; we firmly believe he’s the strongest leader to take WeTravel into this next growth phase.”
Clements, who begins now as CEO, said:
“I’m thrilled to join Johannes and the Co-Founders in this exceptionally successful time. Together we will continue to build an industry-leading product and service offering that empowers all multi-day tour operators to operate successful businesses.”