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Meili combines pre-trip planning and last-minute flexibility into a single marketplace – designed for the 65% of bookings that don't fit the old model.
ENTRY ANGLES
Embeddable cross-sell platforms for complementary services · Integration of third-party service marketplaces via API · Commission-based monetization of adjacent services
VERTICALS
CAPABILITIES
Inventory accuracy and operational management, API integration and embedding technology, Commission-based economic models and pricing
MEILI FOUNDER
“virtual mobile carrier”
Meili wants to "rewrite the rules" of car rental for travelers. The current experience follows one of three patterns:
- A rental is pre-bundled into a travel package the traveler purchased.
- The traveler spends time researching options and makes an advance booking themselves.
- They give up on pre-planning and rent a car on arrival after seeing what's available and at what price.
Meili took the best element from each of these and built a product around them. Its platform is a marketplace that makes it fast and easy to search, compare, and book reliable car rental options anywhere in the world.
The key play: this marketplace can be embedded into any airline, travel agency, hotel, vacation rental, or tour operator website or app with a single line of code – letting travelers book a rental car at the same time they purchase a flight, book a hotel, or arrange any other part of their trip.
When a booking is completed through a partner's site or app, both the partner and Meili take a commission.
The result is a win for everyone in the chain. Travelers get genuine choice and find the option that fits them best. Airlines, agencies, and other intermediaries gain a new revenue stream. And rental companies expand their distribution while maintaining direct access to the customer – which, unlike bundled wholesale packages, lets them offer their full B2C catalog of upgrades and add-ons directly.
Meili is based in Ireland and was founded in 2022. Its latest raise of €8.1M brings total funding to over €20M.
Meili sits at the center of a growing trend: embeddable cross-sell platforms that let companies seamlessly add third-party services to their own customer experience.
This creates new revenue streams for the company embedding the service. It also increases customer satisfaction, since travelers can purchase everything they need in one flow – not as a pre-made bundle with unwanted add-ons, but as individual choices made on their own terms.
The value these platforms deliver is in the aggregation work they do: assembling a broad enough supplier base, keeping inventory current, and offering a ready-made technical integration that any partner can deploy quickly. Once it's live, the partner just watches the supplemental revenue appear.
Even within travel, there are several examples worth noting.
InHouse ([related review](/review/65-deneg-kotorye-poka-prohodjat-mimo)) built an add-on services marketplace for short-term rental hosts: guests receive a link to book restaurants, tours, transfers, and other services through it. Commissions are shared between the host and InHouse. The startup raised $3M in late November.
InterLnkd ([related review](/review/trendy-horosho-a-ih-peresechenie-eshhjo-luchshe)) raised £1M last fall on a marketplace of travel accessories that travel agencies can plug into their sites. The clever angle: the product list shown to each visitor depends on their destination. Beach-bound travelers see snorkels and sunscreen; ski-trip travelers see insulated jackets and boot bags.
Air Doctor ([related review](/review/hrenovyj-ili-ohrenennyj)) built a global marketplace of local doctors that travelers can reach for urgent consultations or medical care while abroad. Having started as a direct-to-consumer app, it now offers travel agencies, airlines, and insurance companies a white-label integration with commission sharing. Total funding: $50.9M, including $20M raised this October.
Gigs ([related review](/review/luchshe-stat-uspeshnym-svodnikom-chem-neudavshimsja-izobretatelem)) built a platform that lets any company become a "virtual mobile carrier" – selling mobile connectivity under their own brand on third-party infrastructure. Its travel industry connection: early adopters were banks and companies offering affordable international roaming to clients and employees traveling abroad. This month, Gigs raised $73M, bringing total funding to $97M.
Embeddable cross-sell platforms are gaining momentum well beyond travel.
MealMe ([related review](/review/proshhe-kormitsja-na-chuzhoj-klientskoj-baze)) built a platform that lets any app embed food delivery from over a million restaurants and stores. TripAdvisor, which surfaces nearby restaurant suggestions, has already integrated MealMe's API to add an order button to restaurant listings. MealMe has raised $16M total, including $8M this November.
In a category very different from travel: Dealt ([related review](/review/deshevle-budet-prisoseditsja)) raised €6M this summer for a marketplace of installation and repair technicians, designed to be embedded in e-commerce stores selling home appliances and equipment.
Cross-selling is hot right now for a simple structural reason: customer acquisition costs have risen sharply, pushing sellers to focus on extracting more value from the customers they already have. Selling complementary third-party services at a commission is one of the most direct ways to do that.
The core decision is what to embed and for whom – ideally a service that's genuinely adjacent to the host product's core job-to-be-done, not just tangentially related. Commission economics need to justify the integration cost, and inventory accuracy turns out to be the operational bottleneck that most aggregation plays underestimate.