Paris, June 23, 2016
Busbud, a Montreal-based startup facilitating the search and booking of bus tickets in 63 countries with hundreds of partners, announces today a technology partnership with Voyages-sncf.com, a major European tourism site and the leading French e-commerce website with revenues of 4.32 billion euros in 2015.
Voyages-sncf.com strengthens its bus offering with Busbud
Voyages-sncf.com chose Busbud as exclusive technology partner to distribute all of its inventory of buses via the Busbud API (application programming interface).
This partnership marks the entry of Busbud into a new space, that of GDS (Global Distribution System), acting as an electronic reservation management platform that will allow Voyages-sncf.com to know in real time the status of the inventory of tickets for all bus carriers that the site distributes like OUIBUS, isilines and Eurolines.
With this new collaboration, Busbud becomes a major technological player in the European market.
Voyages-sncf.com diversifies its product offering
While Voyages-sncf.com already offered OUIBUS (originally known as iDBUS), the site pursues its expansion to offer more choice to its customers, having just announced the integration of isilines and Eurolines.
“We are used to working with innovative and efficient startups in our digital ecosystem to enhance our solutions. As we pursue our expansion in the bus vertical, we chose Busbud because its team is young, dynamic and reliable. During the tendering process, Busbud presented us with a solid proposition for our development in the bus market in France, and also for rest of Europe, ” said Julien Nicolas, director of the Voyages-sncf.com business unit in France.
“We do not believe in a world where only buses exist for travel, but we also don’t believe in a world without bus,” said for his part Thomas Geissmann, Busbud’s VP of Revenue.
“Voyages-sncf.com demonstrates an innovative spirit towards its customer offerings and we welcome the bet on the bus as a development strategy. Buses will definitely represent a significant share of French and European tourism market in the coming years.”
Train and bus complement each other
The two companies share a joint vision— both want to help create a world in which it’s always easy to get from point A to point B.
“We believe in the complementarity of the train and the bus, whether it be to increase the number of accessible destinations, create new multimodal routes or simply allow travellers to choose the cheapest, fastest or most comfortable option according to the needs of the moment,” says Louis-Philippe Maurice, CEO and co-founder of Busbud.
With this announcement, Busbud cements its positioning as bus specialist and becomes an important distributor for European travel sites.
About Busbud
Busbud is the bus travel booking app and website with the largest sellable coverage. Users can search, compare and buy tickets from hundreds of bus companies in 10,000 cities across 63 countries and 500,000 different bus routes. Busbud is based in Montreal, Canada, and currently has 42 employees. It has raised $10.2M dollars from investors such as iNovia Capital, Real Ventures, OMERS Ventures and Revolution Ventures. Its angels and advisors include executives from TripAdvisor, Expedia, Travelocity, Google and Facebook. More information: http://busbud.com
About Voyages-sncf.com
Voyages-sncf.com is a key player in the European tourism industry and an expert in railway travel to Europe and French destinations. The company employs 1 000 people, with two-thirds dedicated to the French and European market. In order to meet the new consumer needs of travellers, Voyages-sncf.com is now present in 30 countries via 67 web and mobile sites, 4 shops and a call-center service. The site lists several carriers such as SNCF, Eurostar, Thalys, TGV Lyria; 400 airlines; 435,000 hotels; 1300 campsites; over 25,000 accommodation offers; 30 car rental companies, etc.
For more information: http://open.voyages-sncf.com/ – http://www.voyages-sncf.com/
Press contact:
Alain Wong, Director of communications at Busbud
Tel: 1-514-467-7663
Email: alain@busbud.com