SION, a SaaS platform that manages commission payments for travel advisors and agencies, has announced $3.2 million in seed funding led by TIA Ventures with participation from SmartFlyer and Virtuoso to advance its promotion of a more robust and open travel tech ecosystem. SION will use the funding to accelerate product development and create automated commission chasing, ramp up integrations, and launch a new payment processing system. The company’s new funding follows $1.3 million it secured in a pre-seed round in 2020.
SION COO and co-founder Alfons Musry said the funding "not only helps to further our commitment to evolve the antiquated ways of the travel agency industry, but it helps speed up our plans to bring more tools and capabilities to the platform and grow our community of users.”
The software platform brings efficiency, accountability and transparency to travel advisors and agencies. Once a travel booking is made, SION automates all the core elements, including the payment status, commission split, supplier invoicing and interactive real-time reporting. This winter, SION is debuting a new and integral part of the platform: A payment processing system that will automatically allow payments to flow through the system. Rather than taking six to eight weeks, SION pays in real time.
In 2019, SION was born out of a travel advisor’s frustration with relying on commissions for a majority of their income, but being burdened with receiving the commissions when they’re due. Within the industry, commissions represent over 80 percent of travel agency revenue, but more than 40 percent of commissions contain discrepancies or don’t get paid. Until SION, the company says, there had not been a simple system for entering, invoicing and tracking payments of travel agent sales made. SION created a centralized online dashboard interface to connect all the parties and manage the workflow to solve all the pain points of commission flow and management. =
According to William Hapworth, co-founder and general partner at TIA Ventures, the software "t is highly intuitive to professionals in the industry," adding it "executes processes in one click and feels like magic, saving hours of time per week while recovering money that is owed.”
Since releasing the send invoice feature, SION has been responsible for the collection of more than 85 percent of delinquent invoices, a common pain point within the industry. With more than 1,500 agents subscribed to the platform, SION is currently managing approximately $2.2 billion in booking revenue.
To learn more about SION, visit www.sioncentral.com.
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