At WeTravel, we believe the daily work of running a custom, multi-day trip should not be a tax on the people designing it. Last year, when we raised our $92 million Series C, we said the money was going toward one thing: building the AI-enabled operating system for multi-day travel. So far this year, we’ve launched an AI-powered CRM, integrated website builder, enhanced supplier payments and much more, to join together and simplify critical back-office workflows for 10,000+ travel businesses. Today, we are taking another big step forward.

WeTravel has acquired Tourwriter, the New Zealand software company that luxury, tailor-made tour operators and DMCs have relied on for 20+ years.

Back in the early 2000s, Glenn and his wife, Denise, ran their own travel business in New Zealand. The business grew quickly, and it was clear they needed a flexible platform that could grow with it. Glenn and Denise joined with Seba and two other tour operators to build Tourwriter, and quickly found interest from other inbound tour operators.

Since then, Tourwriter has spent 23 years understanding the deep back-office workflows that are unique to this part of the travel industry - digital itineraries, a supplier library with real rates and seasonality, quoting with margins and commissions, invoicing, accounting integrations, supplier communications, analytics (and more!) built for nothing but bespoke, custom travel. Glenn and team didn’t need to do customer interviews to know what to build - they built the software around their own needs, and used the tools in their own business every day.

Fast forward to 2020, when Covid hit, and Glenn decided to transition the platform to the cloud, giving birth to the modern version of Tourwriter. The results speak for themselves. In the past two years, Tourwriter clients have sold over $1 billion in trips and now operate in 35 countries, with growth accelerating in recent months.

From the first time I met Glenn and the team, the depth and breadth of their knowledge were obvious, and we shared a belief - that travel, when done right, can be a force for good that brings people together. WeTravel has spent more than a decade building for this industry with pay-ins and payouts inside the operator's workflow rather than stapled to the side of it. Tourwriter has spent 23 years on the specific craft of bespoke travel design.

Put those together - payments that live inside the workflow, AI pointed at automating the tedious, invisible work, and software that already understands how a bespoke trip gets built - and the overhead of a custom trip should keep shrinking while the trip itself keeps getting better.

Together, we will empower operators to run more of their business all in one place and enable more travelers to experience the world.

What is not changing for Tourwriter customers

If you're a Tourwriter customer, I want to be direct about this, because it's the question that matters most today and the one that acquirers usually answer badly.

You stay on the same product. Same team. Same support. Tourwriter continues to operate as its own platform, and Glenn continues to lead it, with the team of nearly 30 staying put in New Zealand, London, and around the world.

Our plan is to invest in Tourwriter and offer cost-saving payment functionality and AI tooling to operators who want it, so they can grow efficiently.

This is needed now more than ever because this part of the travel industry is booming. In WeTravel’s 2026 Annual Trends Report, based on more than a million bookings and thousands of survey responses, 56% of operators reported increased interest in custom luxury bookings in 2025. Our own booking data says the same thing: established custom and luxury organizers on WeTravel grew bookings by 16% and dollar volume by 31% year-over-year in the first half of 2026. Within a $271 billion experiences market, more people want to see the world their own way and every one of those trips is somebody's manual work.

We are very excited to work with Tourwriter to solve problems in this part of the travel industry that has, for far too long, relied on outdated systems and expensive, clunky, cross-border payment providers that offer little to no support. This part of the travel industry deserves better, and we are here to deliver.