A Liverpool travel tech venture that generated £250,000 in its first year of trading has hit the £1m sales mark in just three years and seen headcount rise from five to 14. Tony McDonough reports

Liverpool travel tech business Digital Travel Marketing Group has hit the £1m revenue mark just three years after launching.

Trading as digitaltravel.io the city centre-based business creates apps and websites for clients in the travel and tourism sector, with a particular focus on the cruise industry. Clients include the UK’s biggest high street travel agent, Hays Travel.

It has developed an app platform which it claims helps clients “reimagine the travel buyer experience”. This integrates web, mobile, video streaming, push notifications, QR codes and other emerging technologies.

Founded by Peter Whittle and Peter Aland during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, digitaltravel.io generated £250,000 in sales in the first year. This has now quadrupled by year three. Headcount has also risen from five to 14.

As well as the two Peters there is also a third director and shareholder listed on Companies House called Andrew Runacres. The company now has 67 clients, 59% of whom are based overseas.

The formation of digitaltravel.io came via the merger of Peter Whittle’s CruiseAppy, a mobile app platform for the cruise industry and Peter Aland’s iprogress, a web design and development agency. 

Peter Whittle said: “We saw a gap in the market and established digitaltravel.io to build a business that not only stands out for the quality of what it achieves, but for the way in which it innovates and builds long standing relationships with its clients.

“Three years on, because of a talented team, loyal clients and strong partnerships, we have exceeded our expectations.

“As a start-up we have reached ‘base camp’ and are now investing in people and processes to help grow the business still further along with the scalability of our platform.”

Other clients of the business include Imagine Cruising and Flight Centre and it has established a strategic partnership with global travel technology provider, Traveltek.

“We’ve fuelled our £1m in annual revenue by creating long-term partnerships with many of our clients by agreeing ongoing monthly contracts,” added Peter Whittle.

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“This is for not only support and maintenance but guaranteed development resources to provide a mutually beneficial partnership of response, focus, resource and delivery for our clients while giving us the confidence to invest further with guaranteed revenue streams.

“Our growth has been underpinned by key staff appointments and a series of innovative strategies that have made a huge difference in the marketplace.”