Skift Take
Many bootstrapped travel companies may prove more innovative than venture-backed ones during the pandemic. MaxMilhas is an example, given its distinctive approaches to selling flights and hotels.
When executives look for innovation, they conventionally turn to startups hyped by venture capital. But the pandemic has put many startups on the back foot. That's given an edge to less well-known travel companies that have self-funded their progress. Many of them have been more agile and innovative during the crisis.
A case in point is MaxMilhas, an online travel company in Brazil. This week it bought another innovator in travel, Lance Hotéis. Both companies were bootstrapped. They didn't disclose the deal terms.
First, some backstory: MaxMilhas, based in Belo Horizonte, isn't well known outside of Brazil. But it's significant within the wealthiest country in Latin America. While it has only sold more than 7 million airline tickets since its founding in 2013, it has punched above its weight among the online players and proven out a model that's mostly unknown elsewhere.
Unlike most online travel companies, it has offered a marketplace for trading tickets bought with frequent flier miles. MaxMilhas roughly means "maximizing miles" in Portuguese, and the company provides a blend of the metasearch and agency models.
Before the pandemic, MaxMilhas was selling about 60 percent of the volume of airline tickets in Brazil as Decolar/Despegar, Latin America's largest public company in online travel, sold in Brazil before the crisis, the startup said.
"We launched our company in 2013 with about 28,000 reis, or about $5,000," said Max Oliveira, co-founder and CEO of MaxMilhas. "We've grown out of our sales since then — except for mentoring we received from the startup accelerator 21212 and for some employment c
