Level.Travel Level Travel

Level.Travel was founded in 2011 by Dmitry Malyutin, Ellin Tolstov, Pavel Glushenkov and Evgeny Ginzburg. The service is engaged in the search and booking of organized tours.

History

2022: Data breach of 900,000 users

In mid-December 2022, it became known about the Level.Travel data breach. The press service of the service for searching and buying tours confirmed the information that initially spread in Telegram channels.

The security service of the Level.Travel service recorded a leak of information, as a result of which some user data was published on the Internet, including contact numbers and booking details. The leak did not affect bank and payment information, as well as login information to users' personal accounts. Card numbers and passwords are not stored by the service and are safe, the company said.

Telegram channel "Information Leaks" reported that on December 14, 2022, the Level.Travel user database was in the public domain. According to the channel, it contains data from registered customers and information about the tours they bought. In total, the database has 719 thousand unique phone numbers and 1.2 million unique email addresses.

According to SecurityLab, the NLB cyber group was involved in the leak, which published 3 files: clients.csv, orders.csv and tourist.csv. The file of the first of them contains information about 1.5 million customers of the company, in the order file information about 400 thousand orders, and in the tourist.csv file personal data of more than 900 thousand tourists, including full names, passport data, phone numbers, IP addresses of users and other sensitive information.

By December 15, 2022, Level.Travel is conducting an internal investigation into the incident and is taking all necessary measures to eliminate the consequences. Personal accounts and access to them remain confidential. The service will send recommendations to all users whose contact information has been published to improve the security of their accounts, the company noted. A hotline is organized to support users.^[1]

2021: Raising $6 million from Baring Vostok

On July 14, 2021, it became known about Baring Vostok's investments in Level.Travel. The tour search and booking service raised $6 million from the fund in exchange for a minority stake. Its size is not specified.

Infoline Analytics CEO Mikhail Burmistrov, in a conversation with Kommersant, suggested that taking into account the volume of investments and business turnover, Baring Vostok could receive at least 20-25% in Level.Travel.

Level.Travel intends to direct the funds raised to its own dynamic packaging system, which will form a package tour of many flight and hotel options.

Baring Vostok invested $6 million in Level.Travel tour booking service

Natalya Osipova, executive director of the Alliance of Travel Agencies Association, explained that a travel agent can legally provide a tourist with only one service - to sell a ready-made tour, accommodation or ticket.

To form its own product, the company must become a member of Turpomosch and provide the provided financial guarantees, bearing responsibility to the tourist, she said.

The company did not specify whether they plan to receive their own tour operator license or work through alternative schemes.

Baring Vostok partner Maxim Loginov calls the current period successful for investments in traveltech, guided by forecasts of significant development of the segment in the medium and long term.

According to Mikhail Burmistrov, investments in travel companies are accompanied by risks: although the market is recovering, it is still difficult to build unambiguous forecasts about its future. At the same time, the expert added that until now, investments in the consumer sector by Baring Vostok have been quite successful.^[2]

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