Kelbillet expands to the UK with launch of pan-European brand Gopili

In just under five years, Kelbillet has grown massively from a site to sell unwanted train tickets to become the leading travel search engine in France.  Unlike sites like Expedia, Travelzoo, Travelocity or even SNCF, Kelbillet’s biggest strength is that they help you figure out how to get from point A to point B domestically on more than 80k journey options, often as cheaply as possible and taking into account various types of transportation options (train, rideshare, plane, and buses).  Now Kelbillet will bring their highly successful model to the UK with the launch of its new brand Gopili.
In speaking about their new launch, Founder and CEO Yann Raoul adds:
“We have decided to create a new brand for this new service which aims to provide visitors with the best travel options for domestic journeys in each European country. The name ‘Gopili’ has been chosen by the team following several brainstorming sessions. It is simple, friendly, easy to write and pronounce in the different European languages …and the domain name was available! ”
While Gopili will first be launched in the UK, it was conceived as a pan-European platform, so the UK is a mere first step. However, focusing first on the UK market makes a lot of strategic sense for Kelbillet given the UK’s “fully grown transport market with a high level of competition between the different means of transportation and English is the universal language on the Internet so it provides maximum visibility,” in the words of Raoul.
Kelbillet’s expansion project is an audacious one as their objective is to become the leading multimodal search engine for domestic and short-haul trips in Europe, which is not small feat given the numerous online travel players in the European market. However, they’ve certainly have a strong experience and a solid customer base behind them as well as a 2 million euro investment coming from
Bpifrance & CIC Entreprises.