Reveel, a startup based in Finland, has just secured €650K in pre-seed funding from Inventure and a group of prominent angel investors. The company, founded by a team of passionate individuals including Sebastian Mellblom, Robin Kanerva, Fredrik Fazer, and William Helmenius, is focused on modernizing the tourism industry. Their platform aims to transform traditional paper maps and information displays found in tourist destinations into interactive, digital guidebooks that visitors can access through their smartphones. This funding will enable Reveel to further develop their platform, expand their team, and propel their mission of making tourism experiences smarter and more sustainable.
Reveel is a platform that allows destinations, such as UNESCO-sites, museums, churches, hotels, national parks, and cities, to turn their paper maps and physical info displays into interactive, digital guidebooks that open up in the visitors’ phones with one scan. The platform uses AI to translate all content directly to 28 different languages, allowing travelers from across the globe to discover in their own languages. Destinations can also create digital guided tours through the platform, where the app navigates the visitor through the destination, and at each point of interest, the guide’s voice starts playing automatically. This gives partners a new dimension to their visitor experiences, and instead of building expensive and time-consuming solutions of their own, destinations can join the Reveel-platform instantly.
Reveel provides the partner with the tools to manage, maintain, and update the content at the destination without a hassle, allowing for a more up-to-date experience for the visitor. The platform also allows destinations to create new sources of income and thus monetize previously idle assets, for example in the form of digital guided tours that can be purchased straight from the visitors’ smartphones. Reveel is also in the process of launching entrance ticket services, allowing destinations to outsource this part of the business to an all-in-one solution for their visitors.
“We couldn’t be happier with having such a great group of investors on board. This journey will not only require a great product but also a great team and support system, and we truly feel like we’ve gotten just that. This funding round allows us to accelerate our mission towards truly smart tourism, as well as build the team of rockstars required to make Reveel a household name within visitor experiences.” says Sebastian Mellblom.
In 2021, co-founders Sebastian Mellblom and Robin Kanerva realized that on-site experiencing is outdated – we still get paper maps at destinations, we read information from physical displays and we use outdated audio-devices with disposable headphones at historical sites. Not only is this excessively unsustainable, but it also lacks interactivity and the possibility to discover in a personalized manner. Upon further research, it became clear that there was a lack of a generalized solution that could work in multiple destinations, and the only alternative to modernize these outdated solutions was to build expensive and time-consuming solutions that work only at that particular site, which also tend to become outdated over time. This displayed another issue: travelers don’t want to learn to use a new solution at each site they visit. The solution was to build a platform that can be incorporated instantly, taking away the stress for destinations of designing solutions themselves. Reveel focuses on the technology, the destination focuses on the content. Through platform-thinking, destinations now also get access to continuous product improvements without having to take on a new project each time something needs to be updated.
A fundamental part of the product development, led by William Helmenius, has been to build the product with future scaling in mind.
“Our entire software platform has been built with modularity in mind. Future platform features alongside possible future avenues of expansion are already accounted and prepared for. The scalability of every part of our service has been a concern since day 1 and with today’s implemented software architecture we will not be reaching the limits of our potential any time soon.
“We are experiencing incredible changes in all aspects of technology globally. For us, the focus is to be able to bring these technological developments directly to the world’s destinations without a hassle. Our vision is to be the vehicle through which destinations take the steps towards an era of smart, sustainable tourism. This is why it is fundamental to build a platform that is easy to use, both for our partners as well as visitors.”
This statement comes from COO Robin Kanerva, who has experience in expanding the food delivery company Wolt across 27 countries, thereby making food delivery accessible to millions of users.
“After working at Wolt for 7 years and witnessing the development of a user experience that everyone loves and prefers over competitors, I now want to bring this phenomenon to the travel sector. At Reveel, most of our client meetings start with highlighting the importance of creating real value and an incredible user experience for the visitors. This way, we always have a common goal.”
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