Investor Group Led by Steve Singh Acquires Direct Travel

A group of investors led by corporate travel industry entrepreneur and Concur co-founder Steve Singh has acquired Direct Travel, with plans to expand the travel management company's footprint around the world boosted by the other technology offerings in Singh's portfolio: Spotnana, Troop and Center.

The investors joining Singh in the acquisition include some familiar names in the funding across those travel tech companies: Singh's Madrona Ventures, Durable Capital Partners and Top Tier Capital Partners along with Blackstone Credit & Insurance. Financials of the deal, which closed today, were not disclosed, though Singh said the purchase price was "meaningful."

"It's a big business," Singh said. "It's a $300 million-plus business that's profitable and growing 10 percent per year."

Singh said he expects he can push that growth "meaningfully above market rates for the foreseeable future," hitting the 15 percent to 20 percent range by 2025. Direct Travel currently has more than 4,500 clients, largely in North America and largely in the midmarket space, though it also has enterprise customers including PayPal, Singh said.

"We'll grow in both North America and expand into other geographies, like the EU," he said. "We'll expand also further into the enterprise segment, and we have a meaningful opportunity to expand into group travel, which is not a well-served market segment."

That growth will come in partnership with travel technology offering Spotnana, meetings management platform Troop and payment and expense provider Center, which Singh said all are "redoing foundational elements of the travel ecosystem." 

"If we can combine the best of Spotnana, Troop and Center from a product point of view, along with AI that is being developed at Direct Travel and the service engine of Direct Travel, we can deliver a far better client experience than anybody else in the industry," Singh said. "That is the core premise behind the acquisition of Direct Travel."

Direct Travel will continue to support clients on their preferred platforms, though it will have the philosophy that the trio in the tech stack will "deliver a better value proposition to our customers," he said. "We think, driven by customer demand, we are going to see our customers move to that new stack over time, but it's entirely up to the customer on what schedule that they want to move."

As with the other ventures, Singh will serve as executive chairman of Direct Travel, and one of his former Concur colleagues—Christal Bemont, who was with Concur for 15 years, most recently as chief revenue officer—is taking over as Direct Travel's CEO. After leaving Concur, Bemont served as CEO of data management provider Talend.

Former CEO Ed Adams, who founded Direct Travel in 2011 and was named to the BTN Group's Business Travel Hall of Fame in 2023, is retiring but will continue to serve as an advisor to Direct Travel, Singh said. A few of Singh's other former Concur colleagues are joining Direct Travel as well, including former Concur executive Scott Schwisow, who will run a lot of the TMC's IT initiatives, and former Concur SVP and general manager of global accounts Todd Pelletier, who is joining as Direct Travel's chief revenue officer. Outside of that, "almost the entire executive team" of Direct Travel is being retained, including CFO John Coffman, EVP of customer experience Christine Sikes and the company's regional presidents, Singh said.

Singh also said to expect "a lot of other deals" as a part of Direct Travel's growth strategy.

"Much like when I was running Concur, you're talking about a multi-trillion-dollar industry that is massively fragmented at the TMC and technology level," Singh said. "If we find great TMCs or technology companies that can fit in nicely with our strategy, we're absolutely open to acquiring them."