Airbnb heads a $58 million Series C funding round for WeRoad and appoints its CEO to oversee hotel operations.

      The Milan-based group-travel platform WeRoad has secured a $58 million Series C funding round led by Airbnb, which has acquired a 10% stake and a board position as part of the agreement. Concurrently, Andrea D’Amico, the chief executive since 2022, is departing WeRoad to head Airbnb’s hotels division. TechCrunch and Skift reported on this funding round on Wednesday.

      This investment structure is notable for Airbnb, which has traditionally expanded its Experiences and tours business through organic growth rather than acquiring stakes in specialized companies. Supporting WeRoad while simultaneously recruiting its CEO establishes a closer integration, allowing Airbnb to have a minority stake in the group-tour segment and gain a senior executive with extensive booking experience to oversee its hotel initiatives. Prior to joining WeRoad in 2022, D’Amico spent 18 years at Booking.com, managing significant parts of its hotel operations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

      For WeRoad, this funding round marks a prominent success in the European travel tech landscape. The company specializes in multi-day organized tours with a select group of tour guides, primarily targeting millennials and younger travelers—an audience that traditional tour operators have struggled to engage.

      WeRoad secured €18 million in a Series B round in late 2023 and has consistently grown since then; this new $58 million financing brings total funding to approximately $85-90 million, with the Series C designated specifically for expansion into the U.S. market.

      The U.S. market represents a more challenging segment of WeRoad's strategy. The European group-adventure-travel market has been expanding thanks to millennials’ willingness to pay for structured social travel. However, the U.S. faces established competitors such as Intrepid, G Adventures, and the white-label tour operators within Expedia and the Airbnb Experiences network.

      WeRoad asserts that its proprietary tour-guide platform and brand presence on Instagram and TikTok can successfully translate to the U.S., although customer acquisition costs pose a significant challenge.

      The strategic implications for Airbnb in this partnership are particularly noteworthy. The company has been attempting to diversify from short-term rentals over recent years, experiencing mixed results in the Experiences domain and facing a more arduous path in the hotel-equivalent segment.

      By recruiting an operator with substantial hotel expertise from Booking.com and acquiring a minority interest in a rapidly expanding group-travel platform, Airbnb signals its readiness to invest capital from its balance sheet to facilitate this strategy rather than relying solely on product-team experimental growth.

      The valuation signified by Airbnb’s $58 million for a 10% stake suggests a post-money valuation of approximately $580 million, representing a 4-5x increase from WeRoad’s Series B valuation, which was around $120-150 million at that time. This marks a significant yet not exceptional increase for a profitable, expanding European travel-tech firm in the current investment landscape.

      As for the new chief executive of WeRoad, no official announcement has been made yet. The search for a board member is reportedly ongoing, with an internal candidate likely to assume the role temporarily. The Series C funding is anticipated to support 18 months of operations for the U.S. launch.