The Milan group-travel platform takes a $58M Series C and a strategic 10% Airbnb shareholding. Andrea D’Amico leaves to run Airbnb’s hotels division.
Airbnb has led a $58m Series C in WeRoad, the Milan-based group-adventure-travel platform, taking a 10% stake and a board seat as part of the deal. Andrea D’Amico, the company’s chief executive since 2022, is simultaneously leaving
WeRoad to lead Airbnb’s hotels division. The funding round was reported on Wednesday by TechCrunch and Skift.
The structure is unusual for an Airbnb investment and worth dwelling on. The platform giant has historically grown its Experiences and tours business organically rather than through equity stakes in specialist operators.
Backing WeRoad and hiring its CEO simultaneously is a tighter form of integration that gets Airbnb both a minority position in the group-tour category and a senior operator with two decades of Booking.com EMEA hotel experience to run its own hotels push. D’Amico, before joining WeRoad in 2022, spent 18 years at Booking.com running large parts of its hotel business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
