Romanian travel startup Questo raises USD 1.5 mln for further international expansion

Questo, a platform for city exploration games developed by Romanian entrepreneurs, has attracted funding worth USD 1.5 million in an investment round led by Early Game Ventures with Sparking Capital's participation.

The new investment is set to fuel the Romanian startup's growth and expansion globally, as the company plans to offer city exploration games in all the world's most visited places in the upcoming years. Questo said it would expand to a total of 200 cities by the end of 2021, with a particular focus on the US market.

Questo offers city exploration games that enable tourists and locals to discover and learn about a city on their own, guided by the mobile app. While they resemble tours, they act more like real-world adventure games. The users explore destinations by following clues and solving challenges to discover new places and stories.

During the pandemic, Questo more than doubled the number of cities it operates in. At the beginning of 2020, the company was operating in 40 cities across Europe. As of 2021, it expanded to over 100 cities on four continents, growing its city exploration games supply by 150%, half of them created by business partners.

"People spend most of their lives in cities. Our mission is to enable them to fully enjoy every visible or unknown layer of the city, no matter if they're travelers or locals. Questo uses storytelling and game design to teleport people to a fantasy story in their city, intertwining fiction with reality. We like to think of it like Steam for real-world games, where our players are the main characters, and the local storytellers are the game developers. Currently, our primary focus is on exploration games, but the options are endless," said Alex Govoreanu, CEO and Co-founder of Questo.

The Romanian travel startup has received the "Most Disruptive Travel Start-up of 2019 in Hospitality" Award from UN's World Tourism Organization and is considered one of the Top 25 Hot Travel Startups of 2020 by Phocuswright.

(Photo source: Questo)