Rome2Rio expands advertising business, adds to executive team

Rome2Rio, the trip and route planning platform owned by Omio Group, has announced the expansion of its advertising business to help travellers and destinations discover each other. With its tenured leadership team, and expertise within transportation and travel across rail, bus, car, ferry, and plane, Rome2Rio presents destination marketing organisations (DMOs), and transport and lodging partners with a traveler reach that no other travel company can.

Advertising is a natural focus for the company, which helps its over 600 million annual visitors find the most convenient ways to journey across and to anywhere in the world. As part of its expansion, Rome2Rio is modernising and simplifying its core travel product, while moving away from programmatic and towards inspirational, integrated native and sponsored advertising opportunities. By allowing partners to connect with travellers everywhere in their journey, Rome2Rio will deliver increased value to partners while providing even more travel discovery to its consumers. The company expects to triple its ad revenue by the end of 2026 with this approach.

“Connecting people to new places and experiences has never been more important, and Rome2Rio is the only travel company that can help a broad and diverse range of travelers and travel companies discover each other,” says Rome2Rio CEO Wendy Olson Killion. “DMOs and travel suppliers across the globe can benefit from reaching our travellers on both well-traveled and remote routes during discovery, through in-trip. As a publisher and connector, this is a natural evolution for Rome2Rio.”

Killion, a tenured travel industry veteran who joined the company in 2024, recently restructured the team to focus on growing both operator and advertiser partnerships, delivering key promotions and hires to accelerate these areas. Stuart Thompson, formerly of KAYAK and momondo, was promoted to director of commercial, and former head of global marketing for Expedia Group Media Solutions, Monya Mandich, has been brought on to lead marketing. Killion, Thompson and Mandich will meet with partners at ITB, the world’s largest travel trade show, in Berlin, Germany, March 4-6, 2025.

Working with booking partners across the globe, Rome2Rio connects its users with the right partners in the right region, whether its thousands of transport partners, or OTAs Booking.com, Expedia Group, Omio, and recently added Despegar.