Mirko Lalli founded the company as Travel Appeal in January 2014, built inside H Farm, Italy's largest startup incubator, with a mission to help the travel industry make sense of the growing flood of online data. Early traction came fast: a 3 million euro Series A in 2015, followed by further investment from Airbridge Equity Partners and Indaco Ventures in 2017, as demand for the company's sentiment and reputation data pushed it beyond hotels and restaurants into finance, retail, and consumer goods.

In 2019, the business rebranded as The Data Appeal Company to reflect that broader scope, using proprietary AI, machine learning, and semantic analysis to collect and score online feedback for any point of interest worldwide, then combine it with geographic and contextual data. Clients have included ENIT (the Italian Ministry of Tourism), Campari, and UniCredit, using the data for destination management, location intelligence, and credit risk scoring. In 2022 the company joined Almawave, part of the Almaviva Group, and in 2023 acquired a majority stake in Spain's Mabrian Technologies to strengthen its international tourism intelligence footprint. Its flagship platform, D/AI Destinations, now integrates generative AI to turn millions of data points into destination level strategic recommendations, and as of 2026 the company has been consolidating its full portfolio under a unified Data Appeal and Mabrian brand family led by newly appointed CEO Àlex Villeyra.