Non-refundable travel tickets get a second life as France’s Fairlyne raises $3 million

Ah yes, the non-refundable travel ticket. We’ve all purchased them at one point or another, and eventually, that missed connection, alarm that didn’t go off, or even the “it’s not you, it's me” has come back to bite us in the assets. If Fairlyne and it's fresh $3 million have anything to say about it, long gone are the days of “tough luck. Next!”

The Parisian Resale-as-a-Service, yes we can now add RaaS to the list of aaS’s, is taking on travel distribution and is now backed by seed round lead Speedinvest as well as Evolem, Kima Ventures and FJ Lab several angel investors. According to the company, the investment is earmarked to be used for further expansion in the airlines, railway & road transportation, and hospitality verticals.

Offered up as a white label product, Fairlyne is giving travel operators the opportunity to not only place their products on par with so many other bookable services (think concert tickets, sporting events tickets, etc.), not only upping customer satisfaction but tapping into a huge incremental revenue stream.

“We realised that travel customers were willing to resale their bookings and meanwhile no-shows represent a lucrative opportunity for travel operators,  if they could offer customers who couldn’t make it the chance to resell in advance,” says Fairlyne co-founder and CEO Gilles de Richemond. “So, we built a platform, which can be integrated into any operators’ consumer-facing channels providing customers with a seamless resale experience. The incremental revenue from no-shows can be significant.”

Founded in 2021, Fairlyne was ranked 1st out of 300 startups in the Royal Air Maroc (RAM) Open Innovation challenge. As a result, within the next 3 to 6 months, Royal Air Maroc will implement Fairlyne technology and will be the first airline to offer non-refundable customers the option to release their booking on RAM’s direct channels and avoid losing 100% of their money in case of no-shows. 

On the investment, Speedinvest’s Jeroen Arts commented, “Their exceptional ability to generate substantial incremental revenue and their remarkable progress in establishing a robust network effect is truly awe-inspiring.”