Bookaway books $35M to scale up its ground transportation booking platform

The company is not disclosing its valuation but it has raised $81 million to date.The travel industry sometimes feels like it is in a perpetual state of consolidation: partly because of price pressures due to the slowdown of the last few years; increasing fuel prices; and general competition, companies like Airbnb or Booking, airlines, and hotel groups build more services into their offerings in an attempt to improve their margins and bring more economies of scale into their operations.But Noam Toister, the CEO and founder of Bookaway, believes that a huge opportunity remains in ground transportation largely because of how offline and fragmented it is, including when it comes to traveling to remote or exotic locations.“Our group was born during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a shared belief that the ground transport industry will better meet the needs of travelers when it is united, not fragmented,” he said.