Rome2rio is an online multimodal transportsearch engine for inter-city and intra-city trip planning. Users can input any address, town or landmark as the origin and destination and Rome2rio searches a database of flight, train, ferry, bus and driving routes to present route and price options for traveling to that destination. Rome2rio also offers results for hotels, rental cars, and attractions. It is based in Melbourne, Australia and is owned by Omio.
History
Rome2rio was founded by Bernhard Tschirren and Dr. Michael Cameron, two ex-Microsoft software engineers. The site was born out of their frustrations with the lack of a fast, easy-to-use, and comprehensive multi-modal search engine with global coverage. The two co-founders began work on the product in September 2010 and won the Melbourne Azure Bizspark Camp Award in February 2011. The beta version of Rome2rio was launched on 7 April 2011. Rod Cuthbert, founder of Viator, became CEO in May 2012 as the company raised $450,000. Rome2rio won the People's Choice Award at Phocuswright 2012, the TRAVELtech GlobalCollect Website of the Year in 2013, the Data Specialist Award at the 2015 WITovation Awards and the Best Metasearch Award at the 2016 Travolution Awards. The company raised $2.8 million in funding including a 2014 grant of $1.2 million from Commercialisation Australia. In July 2015, it announced that support for its white label product would cease in January 2016, citing pressure on development resources brought on by rapid growth in its consumer business. The company initially offered both white-label products and application programming interface options for partners wishing to integrate its multi-modal results into web sites and mobile apps. In 2016, the company added direct booking options. In April 2017, Rod Cuthbert became Executive Chairman, Michael Cameron became CEO and Bernie Tschirren was made Chief Architect. Kirsteene Phelan became COO. In November 2017, Rome2rio moved to a new headquarters in Melbourne. In October 2019, Omio acquired the website.
