How TripNinja’s multi-city flight solution is driving revenue for Webjet

When Australia-based online travel agency Webjet acquired TripNinja in November 2021, it was a lifeline for the Canada-based startup.

TripNinja had only come out of stealth mode in 2017, but the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 quickly took a toll on interest in its multi-city flight search technology.

By September 2021, founder and CEO Andres Collart told PhocusWire he was taking steps to shut down. When Webjet learned of those plans, it stepped up to buy the company as a way to expedite its ability to offer complex, multi-city itineraries to its customers without having to build the technology from scratch.

And the partnership is paying off.

In an interview in the PhocusWire studio at Phocuswright Europe in June, Collart explained how the online travel agency has more than doubled its multi-city flight revenue while also bringing down average fares by about 30%.

And now TripNinja has created a virtual interlining product and is working with Webjet to integrate that for its customers.

“It’s really bringing a process that traditional travel agents have been doing for decades,” Collart said.

“It takes someone with 15 to 20 years of experience to know how to properly split tickets, how to really do creative ticketing on these itineraries. We’ve brought in machine learning, we’ve analyzed millions of combinations, and with that we’re able to drastically reduce the price just like a traditional travel agent does except we do it in about five to six seconds.”

Collart also discussed how Trip Ninja’s virtual interlining technology is data-source independent, making it different from some competitors, and also the challenges the company is working to solve as it further develops the solution.

Watch Collart’s full interview below.