Secret City Trails, the platform for self-guided, playful, city discovery experiences, is being acquired by the Netherlands-based, CityGoose.
CityGoose is truly excited about continuing the great work of Secret City Trails, said Lidwine.
Secret City Trails was founded in 2017 by Kristina Palovicova and Wendy van Leeuwen to reinvent how people discover and enjoy cities. What started as a two-women, bootstrapped project grew into a venture-backed business with a presence in more than 60 European cities. With a community of over 90 creators, the team developed hundreds self-guided, web-based walks that help the participants discover hidden and lesser-known spots across cities.
“With support from Speedinvest, Techstars and Transavia Ventures – and of course our customers – our small, yet inventive, team delivered high-quality experiences all across Europe and grew steadily for several years. However, as founders, we realised the time had come to pass on the baton”, Kristina commented.
“Like the overall tourism sector, our business was deeply affected by the pandemic. Post lockdowns, we realised that we didn’t have enough resources to get back to our pre-pandemic growth and then scale even more. We are grateful to have found a team of wonderful people that will carry on delivering on our vision”, Wendy added.
From May 2022, Lidwine Goessens and Frans Ottenhoff, the founders of CityGoose, will take over the Secret City Trails brand, the platform and the management of the team. Also, most of the Secret City Trails creator community will continue to bring their knowledge and experience of their cities to both the curious locals and to the visitors.
“CityGoose is truly excited about continuing the great work of Secret City Trails. Spreading our wings from the Benelux to Europe is a great step forward. It allows us to satisfy our personal curiosity about the world as well as to work with a great group of local route creators.”, said Lidwine. Frans added, “expanding internationally allows us to give more people goosebumps when exploring cities!”
The City Goose team will continue to work closely with Transavia Ventures to promote the playful, self-guided discovery experiences all across Europe.
Nico Gielen, Investment lead of Transavia Ventures, explained, “we are very happy with the takeover of Secret City Trails by CityGoose. CityGoose has an experienced team and a lot of knowledge in developing and marketing interactive city walks. This allows us to continue to inspire our passengers with self-guided discovery experiences in many of our destinations.”
To stay updated with news from Secret City Trails, follow the brand on Instagram.
CityGoose is truly excited about continuing the great work of Secret City Trails, said Lidwine.
“Expanding internationally allows us to give more people goosebumps when exploring cities!”, added Frans.
