Amadeus Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of travel-focused software services provider Amadeus IT Group, has invested an undisclosed amount in Spain-based location ranking platform Avuxi, Tnooz has reported.
Founded in 2014, Avuxi has developed software that ranks every location on earth in a variety of categories, including shopping, nightlife and sightseeing. These rankings are incorporated into searchable heatmaps to help travellers locate the areas that best suit their needs.
The platform is currently being used by travel price comparison site Kayak, accommodation booking site Only-Apartments and hotels group Hotusa.
Avuxi CEO Alexis Batlle told Tnooz in July 2016 the company had so far raised almost $570,000 in the form of from R&D grants, angel investors and accelerator funding. It received up to $45,000 from telecommunications firm Telefónica’s Wayra accelerator in 2014.
Katherine Grass, head of innovation and ventures for Amadeus, told Tnooz the firm is forming a development initiative that wil involve it collaborating with developers and partners.
Grass said: “One of the things they want is a better way to connect with our APIs so the next program is Amadeus for developers.
“The real work is not just in which APIs (application programming interfaces) we open up to third party developers but how they connect and consume that. We see a platform there and a self-service model for companies to use. We are looking at thousands of companies to connect there.”