Skift Take
Who knew that adding affiliate booking links to the hotels mentioned in articles and videos could earn record levels of investment?
Perhaps it's a coincidence, but every time content becomes king, economies tend to reach a peak in their economic and investment cycles.
So what to make of Culture Trip, an online travel magazine, which said Tuesday it had raised $80 million Series B funding round from investors? The round is one of the biggest-ever financings for a travel media start-up.
Czech private investment fund PPF led the round. PPF is the $40 billion investment arm of PPF Group, a conglomerate with 170,000 workers. Culture Trip has raised about $102 million to date, it said, after a seed funding of $2 million in 2015 and a Series A round in late-2016 led by PPF.
The goal is to expand the editorial website and mobile app into an online travel agency in summer 2018.
Soon after, it intends to sell