Smiler Calls Itself a Travel Company, Not a Photography Marketplace

01 /The Concept

Smiler has figured out that the real money isn't in photography – it's in travel. The marketplace connects tourists with local photographers for professional shoots at iconic destinations: a session near the Eiffel Tower, for example, runs €25–45 and can include up to eight people photographed for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and a half. The photographer meets clients on location, already knows the best angles, and delivers edited photos within 48 hours.

The economics are simple. Photographers keep 80% of the session fee for shoots in publicly accessible locations, or 60% when the location requires special access arrangements that Smiler itself negotiates. There's also an "all-inclusive" tier where Smiler handles the full business infrastructure for freelance photographers – training, payment processing, scheduling – in exchange for an additional cut.

Smiler launched in May 2021 and spent its first year building a network of 20,000 photographers before raising its first €7.4M round. A year later it raised another €7.9M. For a European startup growing on the back of tourism demand, that fundraising pace is notably strong.

The public marketplace – where travelers can book directly – only just launched, coinciding with this latest round. Before that, the company operated on a B2B2C model, supplying photographer networks to online travel agencies who bundled sessions as upsells to their existing bookings.

02 /Why It Matters

The most deliberate move Smiler has made is refusing to call itself a photography marketplace. It positions itself as part of the travel market – currently valued at $2.3 trillion – and that distinction matters enormously for how investors price the business. Uber and Tinkoff both fought hard to be classified as technology companies rather than a taxi service and a bank, precisely because tech multiples on revenue run 10–20x versus 0.5–1.5x on profit for traditional sector comps. The same logic applies here: a travel company carries a fundamentally different valuation ceiling than a photographer booking tool.

The sequence of going B2B2C before B2C is also unusual. Most startups start with consumers, burn through small transaction sizes and high-touch support demands, and only later discover the relief of selling to businesses. Smiler did it backwards – building a reliable commission stream through travel agencies first, then opening the direct consumer channel once unit economics and supply were proven.

There's a broader cultural current running through this. A [recent review](/review/ne-vylozhil-fotochki-schitaj-ne-otdohnul) covered Unravel, a travel platform built around the premise of "Instagram-worthy" destinations. Smiler takes that one step further: not just the right place, but professional-quality images of you in it. The underlying behavior – experiences only count once documented – isn't fading. It's the hook that both companies are building businesses on.

03 /Opportunities

The first lesson for any founder here is about market positioning. How you define your category determines which investors look at you, which revenue multiples apply, and how analysts model your upside. "Photography marketplace" is a small category. "Travel experience" is a massive one.

The B2B2C-first approach is also worth copying. Selling to travel agencies gives Smiler a predictable revenue base and forces the product to meet professional standards before consumers even see it. By the time the marketplace opened, the supply side was already seasoned.

The deeper angle is the anti-smartphone bet. As more people take more photos exclusively on phones, the pool of people who want something visibly different from the crowd grows in absolute numbers. Smiler's market expands precisely because phone photography improves – the gap between "good enough" and "genuinely professional" becomes more visible, not less, as the average baseline rises. The fundraising momentum suggests the model is working well enough to merit close attention as a template.