Babbel, the language learning app, announced that it will launch into the language travel market in 2019. The company wants to connect language learners with a curated selection of international language schools by creating an international booking platform.
First steps have already been taken with the acquisition of LingoVentura, a Berlin-based start-up and language travel platform, that already handles bookings for 200 language schools in over 100 cities and countries. Taking over this platform and network allows Babbel to accelerate and directly start iterating the service into a go-to place for language learners.
The language travel market today looks a lot like
Florian Oberleithner, Corporate Strategy Manager at Babbeltravel market in the early 2000s where you would book your trip via a travel office or directly with a hotel. It’s still very fragmented. We are going to change that by launching a central platform to the millions of language learners we already reach via our app.
The current market for international language travel is estimated in the low billions, with about 3 million bookings per year. In Germany alone the market revenue for 2017 was 220M Euros for about 150k travel bookings. Babbel aims to accelerate this by reaching the untapped segments of the market. As millions of people already have a paid subscription to Babbel’s language-learning app, there is a strong potential for interest in language travel, which is beneficial for all partners.