Holiwise the London-based AI-powered travel agency founded by Swedish entrepreneurs that is transforming how premium travellers plan and book trips, has raised £1.3m pre-seed in an oversubscribed round backed by senior executives from global firms including Bank of America, Barclays, Google, and Goldman Sachs.
The raise was led by Bobby Previti, Head of SSA & Covered Bond Trading at Bank of America, and joined by Ulf Nilsson, Nordics & Eastern Europe CEO at DHL, who is also joining Holiwise’s board; Sabri El Jailani and Filippo Zorzoli of Barclays Investment Bank; and Houman Ashrafzadeh, Founder of Padium and Co-founder of Urban Greens.
The pre-seed round coincides with Holiwise’s integrations with several of the travel industry’s most influential platforms. These include HBX Group, a leading independent B2B marketplace for travel technology; and Amadeus, the world’s largest global distribution system (GDS) provider offering real-time access to flights and accommodation data.
The partnerships enable the platform to offer end-to-end trip planning and booking - spanning flights, stays, and experiences - across more than 10,000 destinations worldwide.
Together, the fresh capital and industry partnerships will be used to accelerate development of Holiwise’s AI travel agent and dynamic packaging models, expand platform capabilities, and scale its premium concierge service.
Unlike traditional travel agencies that rely on human agents, or online travel agencies that force travellers to piece together fragmented bookings, Holiwise uses proprietary deep learning and dynamic packaging models to create personalised trips in seconds. Users can personalise trips by mood, budget, location or timeframe, and book entire packages - including flights, accommodation and activities - with a single click.
The platform is already live with tens of thousands of monthly users - with over 80% of customers returning to book again. In 2024, Holiwise was named one of FutureTravel’s Top 10 Travel Startups Globally.
Holiwise offers a complimentary, invite-only premium account status designed for discerning travellers, startups, and SMEs. Premium members gain access to Holiwise’s private platform, featuring insider rates on over one million global stays, often significantly better than those found on mainstream travel sites. Members also benefit from priority concierge support for flights, accommodation, restaurants, and more, along with personalised travel recommendations powered by Holiwise’s models. Users report an average saving of over £250 per trip by booking through Holiwise.
Holiwise was born from the founders’ own frustration with travel planning. Swedish entrepreneurs Albin Eriksson Lippe (CEO) and Kristian Lexeklint (CFO) met at school in Sweden before both moving to the UK to study at the University of Warwick. Having travelled together extensively over the years, they repeatedly found the trip discovery and planning process fragmented and time-consuming - caught between endless booking sites and the high cost of luxury concierges. Spotting a clear gap in the market, they set out to build a better way to plan premium trips, combining the ease and scale of technology with the personalisation of a human travel agent.
Together with Co-founder and CTO Apurva Amin - a senior software engineer with over fifteen years experience spanning Microsoft, payment platforms, and hedge funds - and Founding Engineer Maria Angelica Ancheta, formerly a senior software engineer at Spotify, they brought Holiwise to life. Albin had previously spent five years covering macro hedge funds as a salesperson at Goldman Sachs, while Kristian had four years of experience as a derivatives trader and salesperson at Barclays.
