Bandwango Inc., a software company creating a platform for groundbreaking destination marketing & commerce, has recently raised seed funding worth $3.1 million. The funding is led by Next Frontier Capital, alongside numerous other participants, including SaaS Ventures, Kickstart, Ocean Azul Partners, and Signal Peak Ventures. The latest funding round is a momentous feat for the startup, which had previously raised funding of just $700,000.

For a startup whose primary target customers are tourism bureaus, Bandwango has fared pretty well in the past year, with its customer base almost doubling from 75 to 200.

According to Bandwango CEO Monir Parikh, the company, based in Murray, Utah, has created a platform dubbed Destination Experience Engine, with an aim to connect businesses with communities. This involves integrating offers from local retailers, state parks, breweries, restaurants, and wineries into package deals, which are then offered by tourism bureaus. Notable examples of these include the Travel Iowa State Passport and the Newport Beach Dine Pass.

Despite the devastating blow of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism domain, many organizations responded to the crisis by shifting their focus towards deals designed to coax local populations into supporting nearby attractions and businesses. Parikh estimated that even once the pandemic is over, tourism bureaus will pay heed to local-focused tourism, recognizing locals as the ambassadors and the best organic marketing channels for their businesses.

Parikh has reportedly stated that tourism bureaus find it challenging to prove their economic impact to their funders, since collecting data about online visitors is becoming harder due to the increasingly stringent privacy regulations.

Therefore, while these bureaus were previously content with advertising deals and linking them out to other sites for customers to purchase, in the present scenario, they have found selling the deals themselves to be an ideal way to prove their worth.

Bandwango is focused currently on delivering a white-label solution to customers, rather than building its own consumer deal destination. However, it is planning to eventually undertake broader distribution of these deals by developing its own “private label brands”.

Source Credit: https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/13/bandwango-raises-3-1m-to-power-tourism-and-experience-focused-deals/