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Travel tech startup hotel engine valued at $2.1 billion after latest fundraise.

(Reuters) - Hotel Engine said on Tuesday it had raised $140 million in a funding round led by a fund advised by private equity giant Permira that valued the travel technology startup at $2.1 billion.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

Business travel has started to recover after a pandemic-era slump. Companies offering services to ease the processes behind bookings and logistics have been seeing strong demand.

Meanwhile, venture capital and private equity-led funding markets are also on the mend following a prolonged slump due to higher-for-longer interest rates.

Hotel Engine said it is focused on simplifying business travel by providing software that saves companies time and money without the hassle of contracts, agent-assist fees or minimum spends.

Its customers include snack and beverage giant PepsiCo, media company NBCUniversal and supermarket chain Whole Foods Market, according to the company's website.

Hotel Engine offers business travelers benefits such as consolidated invoices, 24/7 customer support and insurance.

Its series C funding round was led by Permira Growth Opportunities II.

BY THE NUMBERS

Hotel Engine said it is profitable, recording a 70% year-over-year revenue growth at scale, and is on track to book more than 10 million room nights this year.

Focused on business travel, it has a network of over 750,000 hotels, 300 airlines and 40 rental car companies, among others.

The company was valued at $1.3 billion in a series B round in November 2021.

WHAT'S NEXT

Hotel Engine said new capital from the round will be used to fund ongoing product development, including the launch of flight and rental car bookings on its platform.

The company is rebranding its name to 'Engine' and expects the new booking options to go live in October.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)

The curated list of the most valuable private companies in the world | Learn More

Business Travel Startup Engine Hits $2.1B Valuation After $140M Series C

Engine , formerly Hotel Engine, booked a $140 million Series C led by a fund advised by private equity firm Permira that values the Denver-based startup at $2.1 billion.

The new valuation represents a 62% jump from its previous $1.3 billion value after a $65 million Series B in late 2021.

That increase is no small feat considering many startups are still raising money in flat or even down rounds from their sky-high valuations during the record venture market of 2020 and 2021.

It also shows the continued bounce back of business travel — one of the sectors most greatly affected by the COVID pandemic and one that has taken time to eventually return.

Growing and rebranding

Engine’s platform connects business travelers to a network of more than 750,000 hotels, 300 airlines and 40 rental car companies. Those travel providers also use the company’s platform to provide special offers to business travelers, manage reservations and create marketing.

The company is profitable and is growing its revenue 70% year over year. The company will use the fresh capital to support product development, including the launch of flight and rental car bookings to its platform.

The company also announced it will rebrand to “Engine.”

“Hotel bookings will always be in our DNA, but we’re out to transform the entire travel experience,” said CEO Elia Wallen in release . “We want to become the engine of business travel. Our new name will reflect that, and with Permira’s latest investment, we’ll be better positioned than ever to turn our ambitions into reality.”

The new round is the largest raised this year by a travel business startup, surpassing the approximately $106 million Series D Spain-based TravelPerk closed in January, per Crunchbase data .

Founded in 2015, Engine has raised $221 million, per Crunchbase .

Related Crunchbase Pro list:

• Largest Rounds By Business Travel Startups

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the Crunchbase Daily.

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69 Best Travel Tech Startups to Watch in 2024

The definitive seedtable ranking of travel tech startups.

We track 18,000+ companies and rank them dynamically using our Seedtable Score – a score that uses quantitative and qualitative data points to signal the momentum behind a company. We then monitor the list manually leveraging our expertise as founders and investors.

The Seedtable database reveals 392 startups in the Travel Tech industry , who have collectively secured $11.1B in funding with the average funding per startup standing at $28.3M . Seedtable has compiled profiles on 205 founders and executives for these startups .

Last update to the database: Sep 17, 2024. See changelog .

Displaying 69 out of 392 Companies

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The 28 Most Innovative Travel Tech Startups Around the World

Asian travel tech startups

Middle east travel tech startups , american travel tech startups, european travel tech startups, latam travel tech startups.

Although it suffered tremendously during the pandemic, the travel industry keeps going forwards. In 2020, the entire sector lost more than 60 million jobs and $4.5 trillion . However, it’s coming back to its feet, and some projections indicate that it will again become one of the fastest-growing sectors. It’s expected to reach a market size of $1.5 trillion and a growth rate of 8.5% by 2027 .  

One reason for such incredibly fast recuperation is travel tech. There are hundreds of innovative travel tech companies focused on delivering powerful solutions to help travel companies achieve operational excellence, generate new revenue streams, and stay above the fold even during the most challenging times.

Here is the list of the most innovative travel tech startups you should know in 2022.

The Asian travel tech startup market is quite dynamic, with new startups emerging regularly. We’ve found the following five startups to be the most innovative.

Website: https://www.airalo.com/  

Product/service description: Airalo is a travel tech startup that offers eSIMs. eSIMs are a great alternative to SIM cards, and they are supported by cutting-edge smartphones. The company’s offer currently includes over 190 eSIMs cards.

Stage: Series A

Year of foundation: 2019

Founders: Abraham Burak and Ahmet Bahadır Özdemir

Funds raised: $7.3M

Why have we included it in the list?

Airalo has secured its position on our list because it enables people to easily stay connected when traveling without spending a fortune on high roaming bills. It offers dedicated apps for both Android and iPhone users.

Website: www.travelflan.com  

Product/service description: TravelFlan is a comprehensive platform leveraging cutting-edge tech, including AI and Big Data, to deliver outstanding experiences to travelers and travel companies.

Year of foundation: 2015

Founders: Abel Zhao

Funds raised: $7 million

We included TravelFlan on our list because it’s a great example of a small team being able to achieve a lot. In just a few years, the startup delivered an inventory aggregator and processor, a big data analytical engine, a supply chain and inventory management system, and a voice- and text-based AI personal concierge. 

Website: www.yanolja.in/ko/  

Product/service description: Yanolja is one of the most successful travel tech startups in Asia. It delivers an easy-to-use mobile app for hotel reservations. The company uses AI and VR to delight its users.

Stage: Venture – Series Unknown

Year of foundation: 2005

Founders: Lee Sujin

Funds raised: $1.9 billion

Yanolja is on our list because the company continues to seek new solutions beyond mobility tech to help the travel industry move forward. The most recent Yanolja strategy was to leverage IoT to create a cloud-based hotel management solution.

Website: www.be-spoke.io  

Product/service description: Bespoke is a startup focused on leveraging AI to deliver a powerful chatbot to travelers. The chatbot can make reservations, offer personalized recommendations, and answer many questions.

Stage: Series B

Founders: Akemi Tsunagawa

Funds raised: $2.6 million

Bespoke is one of the best AI-enabled chatbots with multilingual capabilities in the travel sector. The startup even enabled the Japanese government to use it during the pandemic to deliver critical information to travelers and residents.

H2O Hospitality

Website: www.h2ojapan.co.jp  

Product/service description: H2O Hospitality is among a few startups that have successfully built an in-house automation solution to streamline the management of accommodation facilities. 

Stage: Series C

Founders: John Lee

Funds raised: $48.9 million

What we love about this startup’s tech is that it’s capable of automating all processes through a PMS without any additional human resources on site. That enables the startup to guarantee lowered operational costs.

There are a dozen Middle East-based travel tech startups, especially in Israel. You can find the most innovative ones below.

Website: mize.tech  

Product/service description: Mize offers profit optimization solutions to facilitate higher profits . Using big data enables hotel booking businesses and hotel resellers to easily manage post-booking revenue and become more competitive in their markets. 

Stage:   Series B

Year of foundation: 2016

Founders: Dor Krubiner, Guy Levitan, and Omry Litvak

Funds raised: $4.4 million

Mize is on our list because it helped revolutionize revenue management as we know it . Instead of optimizing the selling-side and pre-booking processes, it enables companies to do buy-side and post-booking revenue management.

Website: www.upstay.tech  

Product/service description: UpStay offers hotels a new way to generate additional revenue streams. This easy-to-adopt upselling platform enables hotels to capture more pre-arrival sales, including additional ancillaries and room upgrades.

Stage: Pre-Seed

Founders: Tzafrir Blonder

Funds raised: $1 million

UpStay doesn’t only unlock new revenue streams, but it’s also completely automated. The staff doesn’t have to do anything, as UpStay works in the background of the existing hotel system. More importantly, it ships out with support for Channel Manager, Booking Engine, and PMS integration .

Website: www.ekar.ae  

Product/service description: ekar is a revolutionized car rental service. Using geo-location and other advanced mobile technologies, ekar delivered an app that enables travelers to benefit from a daily car rental service. 

Founders: Ravi Bhusari and Vilhelm Hedberg

Funds raised: $17.5 million

We included ekar in our list because it uses the latest tech to enable travelers to book and access cars for personal driving use safely and securely. Every car in their network is equipped with tech that enables travelers to unlock and lock them with their smartphones.

Website: www.guesty.com  

Product/service description: While Guesty started small back in 2013, today, it’s one of the world’s leading property management solutions. The platform comes with easy-to-use features to enable property managers to streamline and automate their processes.

Stage: Series E

Year of foundation: 2013

Founders: Amiad Soto and Koby Soto

Funds raised: $284.5 million

Guesty is on our list because it is the first end-to-end property management solution for short-term rentals. The company successfully delivers all the nifty features, such as a unified inbox to help managers streamline bookings and check-in & check-out date management.

Website: www.reTravel.io  

Product/service description: ReTravel is a startup aiming to help travel agencies with their upselling and cross-selling efforts. The startup’s marketplace features everything a travel company needs to personalize its offer and attract more travelers. 

Year of foundation: 2020

Founders: Nir Gurevich and Revital Kristal

Funds raised: N/A

We added ReTravel to our list because it uses modern technologies such as AI and ML and delivers a solution that travel companies of any size can afford. The level of personalization goes so far that the platform can offer the right product to the right customer via the perfect channel.

Website: www.air-dr.com  

Product/service description: Air Doctor is a connection technology that enables travelers to find and use medical services wherever they are. The company offers its services online, thus enabling anyone who wants to use them to do it on the go as long as they have an internet connection.

Founders: Efrat Sagi Ofir, Jenny Cohen Derfler, Yam Derfler, and Yegor Kurbachev

Funds raised: $30.9 million

While Air Doctor doesn’t use cutting-edge technologies, it does provide innovative perks to travelers. Given that travelers are more concerned about their health after the Covid pandemic, Air Doctor’s vast medical network of physicians can encourage travelers to book packages and be more relaxed.

The American travel tech startup scene doesn’t fall behind its Asian and Middle East counterparts. The market is quite diverse, with startups leveraging tech to achieve all sorts of objectives. Here are the top five travel tech startups in North America. 

Website: https://www.safetywing.com/

Product/service description: This is one of the unique tech travel startups, more precisely, insurtech travel startups. SafetyWing specializes in providing health and medical insurance to remote individuals and businesses. 

Year of foundation: 2017

Founders: Hans Nyvold Kjellby, Lona Alia, Sarah Beyahte Sandnes, and Sondre Rasch

Funds raised: $47.1 million

This innovative insurtech startup has reserved its spot on our list of travel tech startups because it creates freedom for travelers . Its innovative approach to travel insurance enables travelers across borders to get travel and medical incident insurance even while abroad.

Mogul Hospitality

Website: https://www.mogulhospitality.com/  

Product/service description: Mogul Hospitality is a next-gen platform to enable companies to easily identify and contact top talent in the industry. Its focus is on enabling travel and hospitality brands to build trust and thrive on the unique values they offer to their clients.  

Stage: Seed

Founders: Alexander Mirza and Yvonne Choi

Funds raised: $3.1 million

We’ve added Mogul Hospitality to the list because it packs some really powerful features, including talent acquisition and data analytics, service profit chain management tools, and experiential training and learning platform. 

Website: www.hopper.com  

Product/service description: Hopper is a travel tech startup that came up with the travel app. The app uses big data and predictive analytics to make relevant and affordable travel recommendations to its users. 

Stage: Secondary Market

Year of foundation: 2007

Founders: Frederic Lalonde and Joost Ouwerkerk

Funds raised: $633.7 million

Hopper is a perfect example of a well-aged travel tech startup. We added it to our list because they were among the first startups to recognize the value of big data and the future of smartphones. Today Hopper mobile app helps thousands of travelers worldwide to find the best hotel and flight deals. 

Website: https://www.tentrr.com/  

Product/service description: Tentrr is one of the few travel tech startups that truly revolutionized how people interact with campsite-related travel products without reinventing the wheel. Tech-wise, the company uses a simple website with advanced location-based search functionality. It enables people to book campsites on private land. 

Founders: Eloise Bune and Michael D’Agostino

Funds raised: $17.8 million

While Tentrr doesn’t use new tech, we added it to our list because it revolutionized the campsite booking process. By enabling landowners to interact directly with travelers, Tentrr successfully facilitated local economic growth throughout the country, secured new revenue streams for landowners, and promoted natural locations.

Website: www.snaptravel.com  

Product/service description: Snaptravel is a travel tech startup that built its solution around AI. Their platform leverages AI to identify relevant, affordable hotels and flights for every traveler . Snaptravel’s price-conscious users can also use the platform to book accommodations and transport.

Founders: Henry Shi and Hussein Fazal

Funds raised: $101.4 million

Snaptravel is an excellent example of how a travel tech startup can create astonishing results when thinking out of the box. In fact, Snaptravel used its message-driven platform to create Snapcommerce, which is a platform that enables users to find the products they need at the most affordable prices.  

The European travel tech startup market is blooming. There are dozens of startups in this niche offering a wide range of solutions to companies in the sector. The following five emerge as the top ones when it comes to innovation. 

Travel Perk

Website: www.travelperk.com  

Product/service description: The team at Travel Perk has come up with a comprehensive platform for business travel booking and management. This startup, with headquarters based in Barcelona, offers an end-to-end solution for the business travel needs of any company. 

Stage: Series-D

Founders: Avi Meir, Javier Suarez, Ron Levin

Funds raised: $408.2 million

It’s great to have a platform that allows you to book and manage business travel – and Travel Perk does it in a very convenient and intuitive way offering deep insights into travel spending. It also allows users to get information on their companies’ carbon impact updated in real-time.

123Comapre.me

Website: https://123compare.me/en/  

Product/service description: 123Compare.me is a travel tech SaaS company focused on creating a perfect conversion rate optimization solution for the hospitality industry . It enables travelers to easily compare prices on official websites and OTAs, thus enabling them to get the best deal.

Stage: Pre-seed

Founders: Jordi Serra and Pau Ferret

Funds raised: Approximately $250.000

We decided to add 123Comapre.me to the top travel tech startup list because they offer a sophisticated solution that compares direct booking and OTAs’ prices in real-time. It’s one of the few travel tech solutions that promote direct booking.

Website: www.lodgify.com  

Product/service description: Lodgify startup entered the market with one goal – to simplify marketing for vacation rental product providers. They came up with a comprehensive SaaS platform for vacation rental property managers and owners.

Year of foundation: 2012

Founders: Dennis Klett and Marco De Gregorio

Funds raised: $6.6 million

Lodgify secured its position on our list because it makes a huge difference for vacation rental owners and managers when it comes to marketing and management properties. Its intuitive dashboard enables users to establish an online presence, facilitate online booking, and synchronize data across all online platforms. 

Website: www.questoapp.com  

Product/service description: Questo enables travelers to explore cities in a brand-new way. The startup has created an app that enables creators to come up with engaging city exploration games. The app currently supports both Android and iPhone devices and features over 100 city exploration games. 

Founders: Alexandru Govoreanu

Funds raised: $1.8 million

We’ve added Questo to our list because it enables travelers worldwide to experience cities like never before. The app is quite engaging as it offers games centered around a wide range of themes such as movies, local legends, books, and historical facts. 

The Hotels Network

Website: www.thehotelsnetwork.com  

Product/service description: The Hotels Network’s innovative approach to growth hacking enables hotels to attract more guests and increase bookings through a direct channel. The platform leverages several technologies to allow hotels to personalize online booking journeys for all guests individually. 

Founders: Juanjo Rodriguez, Laura Martinez Celada, Marc Rollan Serrano

Funds raised: $15.2 million

What we love about the Hotels Network is its well-planned and comprehensive platform. It comes with all the features hotels need to attract and engage new potential guests. It also uses predictive personalization to deliver memorable experiences to potential guests, thus increasing conversion rates and boosting direct bookings.

If you want to see what’s going on in the Latam travel tech startup niche, you need to check out the following companies.

Website: www.tripyeah.com  

Product/service description: TravelYeah is a startup that offers a comprehensive travel meta optimizer. The company uses AI, ML, and sophisticated algorithms to process thousands of data points and create personalized and the most optimal travel itineraries for travel agents.

Year of foundation: 2020 

Founders: Elias Musalem, Fernando Ordonez, and Miguel Rodriguez

Funds raised: $14 million

We’ve added TripYeah to our list because the startup uses next-gen technologies to create next-gen solutions. Their travel meta optimizer is one of its kind in helping travel agents create itineraries that reflect the unique needs and preferences of travelers.

Website: www.travelx.io  

Product/service description: TravelX specializes in providing online travel services. But there is one thing that makes their services unique. The startup uses blockchain technology, thus making its retailing and distribution platform transparent, secure, efficient, and decentralized.

Year of foundation:   2021

Founders: Juan Lafosse

Funds raised: $10 million

TravelX has secured its spot on our list because the startup revolutionizes travel product distribution and retailing . Thanks to blockchain, travel companies can easily tokenize their travel and transportation product inventory to facilitate sales across borders while reducing costs and generating more revenue . 

Website: https://travel.rappi.com/  

Product/service description: Following great success, Columbian startup Rappi decided to tap into a new vertical by launching Rappi Travel startup. Rappi allows users to book flights to destinations worldwide through an Android or iPhone mobile app. 

Year of foundation: 2020 Rappi Travel (2015 Rappi)

Founders: Juan Pablo Ortega, Sebastian Mejia, Felipe Villamarin, Guillermo Plaza Roche, and Simón Borrero

Funds raised: $2.2 billion

We’ve added Rappi Travel to our list because the startup’s team seems to never settle down with an achievement. Instead, they always look for new innovative solutions to help the tourism sector recuperate and provide additional support to travelers. 

Website: https://www.onfly.com.br/  

Product/service description: Onfly is a startup that delivers next-gen solutions for business travel. It also offers solutions for travel expense management and credit cards. Its focus is on small and medium businesses in LATAM. 

Founders: Marcelo Linhares

Funds raised: $390,000

Business travel is an important aspect of business management for many companies. And we’ve added Onfly because it offers companies everything they need to manage their business travels through one platform. 

Website: https://arrivedo.com/  

Product/service description: Arrivedo leverages cutting-edge technologies to create and curate content for travelers. It enables travel companies to drive user engagement rates by offering them a way to tell a story about every destination in their offer. 

Founders: Alonso Franco and Rodrigo Lopez

Funds raised: $3.9 million

We added Arrivedo to the list because it’s a perfect example of how to leverage popular technologies to delight travelers. The app curates every guide, ensuring that only the most complete and engaging guides are available to hotels, travel agencies, and tourism boards. The content is dynamic, and users can access it through a map easily embeddable on a website or in an app.

Website: https://pinguim.app.br/  

Product/service description: Pinguim is a tech and tourism startup devoted to changing the way people interact with travel packages. The app leverages AI to help connect people who share common travel goals and those that want to have the same experiences and same destinations.

Stage:   Seed

Founders: Renata Franco

Funds raised: $195,000

Pinguim has secured its spot on our list because it offers something brand new to people who enjoy traveling. Thanks to the AI and easy-to-use app, travelers can now meet like-minded people and explore the world together. 

Local Adventures

Website: https://localadventures.travel/  

Product/service description: Local Adventure is a travel tech startup that specializes in offering accessible solutions to enable clients to easily plan and book their trips. The company also offers innovative fintech solutions to help clients get access to more flexible arrangements.

Stage : Seed

Founders: Daniel Peña, Moises Vera, and Sebastian Nicolas Rodríguez Romero

Local Adventures is on the list because it doesn’t just offer any travel experience to travelers. The company tropicalizes and validates experiences using technology to ensure only the best ones are available to clients. The company has also helped LATAM tourists get access to international travel packages.

According to CB Insights, the global travel tech startup space lost over 30% of funding in 2020 . Nevertheless, some startups managed to attract tech investors by embracing innovation. 

The 25 startups you had the chance to discover above are on our travel tech market map . While each one brings unique value, they all have one thing in common – they help recuperate the travel sector . 

As you can see, these startups use both proven and emerging technologies to achieve various goals, from improving the traveling experience to enabling travel companies to capture more profit and generate new revenue streams.  

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Cristóbal Reali, VP of Global Sales at Mize, with over 20 years of experience, has led high-performance teams in major companies in the tourism industry, as well as in the public sector. He has successfully undertaken ventures, including a DMO and technology transformation consulting. In his role at Mize, he stands out not only for his analytical and strategic ability but also for effective leadership. He speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. He holds a degree in Economics from UBA, complementing his professional training at Harvard Business School Online.

Mize is the leading hotel booking optimization solution in the world. With over 170 partners using our fintech products, Mize creates new extra profit for the hotel booking industry using its fully automated proprietary technology and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue across its suite of products for its partners. Mize was founded in 2016 with its headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices worldwide.

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TourismTech® Insights: Travel | Hospitality | Sustainability

Traveltech funding 2024, this dataset highlights the dynamic nature of the travel tech industry, with significant investments pouring into innovative solutions ranging from ai-driven travel planning to sustainable travel..

Dear TourismTech Enthusiast,

Hey there! Just a heads up—we've put together a list of awesome travel startups that scored funding in 2024. We're constantly updating this list monthly. We've already featured 127 travel tech startups from across the globe, and we'll keep adding more as we catch wind of new funding news daily.

Request Report Access

Funding Analysis

Top Funded Companies:

Boom Supersonic (US): $700M (Series Unknown)

Lime (US): $523M (Series E)

Omio (Germany): $476M (Series E)

GetYourGuide (Germany): $484M (Series E)

Traveloka (Indonesia): $420M (Series G)

Notable High Funded Companies (Above $100M):

Bird (US): $275M (Series D)

Turo (US): $250M (Series E)

Klook (Hong Kong): $225M (Series E)

Sonder (US): $210M (Series D)

Away (US): $181M (Series D)

Hopper (Canada): $170M (Series G)

Cabify (Spain): $160M (Series E)

Geographic Distribution

United States:

Numerous startups with high funding, focusing on diverse aspects like supersonic travel (Boom Supersonic), electric scooters (Lime, Bird), car sharing (Turo), and innovative travel planning and booking platforms (Sonder, Roadtrippers, RVshare).

Germany: Strong presence with companies like Omio, GetYourGuide, and Holidu focusing on travel booking and rental platforms.

United Kingdom: Significant number of startups with varying focuses, from accommodation management (Travelnest, Altovita) to travel financing (Fly Now Pay Later).

France: Active in personalized travel experiences (Worldia) and carpooling (BlaBlaCar).

Asia-Pacific:

Indonesia: Prominent with Traveloka and Bobobox, focusing on travel booking and unique accommodations respectively.

Hong Kong: Klook dominates with a substantial funding amount and a focus on travel activity booking.

Core Services and Innovations

Travel Booking and Management:

TravelPerk (Spain): Corporate travel management.

Omio (Germany): Long-distance travel.

GetYourGuide (Germany): Tours and activities booking.

Traveloka (Indonesia): Southeast Asian travel bookings.

Innovative Transport Solutions:

Boom Supersonic (US): Supersonic jet travel.

Lime and Bird (US): Electric scooter rentals.

Turo (US): Peer-to-peer car sharing.

Cabify (Spain): Ride-hailing services.

Accommodation and Rentals:

Sonder (US): Managed apartments and hotels.

Holidu (Germany): Holiday rental platform.

Travelnest (UK): Property management for short-term rentals.

Bobobox (Indonesia): Capsule hotels.

Travel Experience and Personalization:

Worldia (France): Personalized travel experiences.

Questo (Romania): Gamified city exploration.

Heygo (UK): Interactive travel video streams from local experts.

Emerging Trends

Sustainability:

Surf Air Mobility (US): Zero-emission electric flying.

Viatu (Switzerland): Sustainable travel booking.

Technology Integration:

AI-Powered Platforms:

Hopper (Canada): AI-driven travel booking.

Trieve (US): AI-powered B2B travel solutions.

Blockchain in Travel:

BabylonChain (US): Blockchain technology for data security.

Unique Travel Solutions:

Daytrip (Czech Republic): Private car transfers and sightseeing.

Tracki (US): Real-time GPS tracking solutions.

Fly Now Pay Later (UK): Flexible travel financing.

Thejus Joseph | TourismTech™

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Travel Tech Applauds Funding for New U.S. Department of Commerce’s Assistant Secretary for Travel and Tourism

March 13, 2023 — This week, President Biden signed into law funding to establish the first Assistant Secretary for Travel and Tourism position within the U.S. Department of Commerce . This position will be dedicated to developing and coordinating a national tourism strategy for the United States.

“On behalf of members of the Travel Technology Association, we express our thanks to congressional leaders for including funding for the Assistant Secretary of Travel and Tourism office, and for the leadership of Rep. Dina Titus (NV-01), Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MI) in its creation,” said Travel Tech President & CEO Laura Chadwick. “Travel Tech and our member companies stand ready to support the new Assistant Secretary and its important mission.”

“We congratulate Geoff Freeman and the team at the U.S. Travel Association along with other travel stakeholders for their tireless advocacy to secure this funding,” Chadwick added.

The Assistant Secretary position was first proposed by Rep. Titus in the Visit America Act (H.R. 6965/117th) and included in Senator Rosen’s bipartisan Omnibus Travel and Tourism Act. Senator Rosen’s legislation was included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill. Travel Tech issued a press release praising the legislation’s passage by Congress in late 2022.

The Travel Technology Association (Travel Tech) empowers traveler choice by advocating for public policy that promotes marketplace transparency and competition. Travel Tech represents travel technology innovators ranging from dynamic startups, small, and midsize businesses to leading online travel agencies, metasearch engines, short-term rental platforms, global distribution systems, and travel management companies.

To schedule an interview with a Travel Tech spokesperson, contact Bradford Williamson of Glen Echo Group at 202.870.3234 or [email protected].

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Where This Fidelity Venture Fund Is Placing Travel Tech Bets

Sean O'Neill , Skift

February 24th, 2022 at 2:30 AM EST

Many people wonder why some travel startups attract venture funding while others don't. In this interview, Gaurav Tuli, a partner at Fidelity's F-Prime, clears up some of the mystery.

Sean O'Neill

Travel Tech Briefing

Editor’s Note:  Exclusive reporting on technology’s impact on the travel industry, delivered every Thursday. The briefing will guide executives as they decide if their companies should “build, buy, or partner” to stay ahead.

F-Prime Capital is a venture firm affiliated with Fidelity Investments , the U.S. financial services giant. It makes non-strategic investments in technology and health care .

F-Prime holds stakes in four travel tech startups:

• Canary Technologies , which this week announced a $15 million Series A round led by F-Prime. The startup provides hotels with technological tools to help with operational tasks and guest management.
• AvantStay , a short-term rental property operator that also helps match investors with real estate opportunities. In December, AvantStay raised $160 million in funding. This month it raised $500 million for a subsidiary to hold its property assets.
• OTA Insight , a business intelligence service for hotels. In November, it secured $80 million in funding.
• ConnexPay , which offers a fully integrated merchant processing and virtual-card-issuing solution. This startup is building a payment distribution platform that digitizes the flow of funds for the travel industry and other sectors . In December, it closed a $20 million investment led by the card-issuing service Marqeta.

To learn more, I spoke with Gaurav Tuli , a partner at F-Prime (and a Skift Pro subscriber ).

“We believe travel tech has been going through a renaissance,” Tuli said. “It’s a super- super-interesting place for a venture fund. “

• “One of the biggest reasons is that venture capital historically invested in consumer-facing businesses,” Tuli said. “But as the OTAs [online travel agencies] have gotten so strong, the consumer space is a harder game to play because you’re competing against marketing dollars that are almost infinite.”
• So in comparison, business-to-business startups in travel have more opportunities for early-stage investors.
• “We look at hundreds of travel tech deals a year now,” Tuli said. “Hotel tech is a big part of that.”

What was one of the major reasons F-Prime invested in Canary Technologies?

• “They were able to sell to thousands of hotels in only 18 months, which is unheard of in this space for new entrants,” Tuli said. “As venture investors, we need to see companies scale really quickly by the standards of this asset class.”
• “Scale matters because if you’ve sold hotels products the hotels absolutely love, you’ve earned this unique position where you can build and sell more products to them,” Tuli said.
• “Building a competitive moat in technology is very hard because the barriers to entry in creating software have come down dramatically,” Tuli said.
• “For OTA Insight, the best competitive moat is that they have tens of thousands of hotels using their products,” Tuli said. “That’s a highly defensible position if they continue to earn the trust of their customers as they scale.”

Few hotel tech businesses have gotten a good command of two things — the “ground game ” and the “air game ,’ in the language of Tuli and his colleagues.

• The ground game is selling to individual hotels at scale.
• The air game is getting hotel brands to sign master sales agreements and then promote or push the software to the properties under their flag.
• Most hotel tech vendors only figure out small pieces of the ground game.
• Only a rare few can do the ground game at scale while also doing the air game well.
• “Many questions come up when building a go-to-market sales motion,” Tuli said. “When do you hire business development representatives? When do you hire account executives? When do you need a VP [vice president] of sales? How much time should the CEO spend on selling to brands? How much should they spend on selling from the bottom up to independents?”
• All of these questions require thoughtful, strategic answers. Many enterprise companies outside of travel have developed best practices in addressing questions similar to these ones. But it’s been rare, historically, for hotel vendors to master the best practices.

A vendor has to make a great product first. But that’s just table stakes. A great product won’t necessarily sell itself.

• The subset of companies that have developed great products have learned how to sell software — a different skill. Many excellent developers have stumbled at selling and distributing their products.
• “You have to speak in the hoteliers’ language, you have to understand what’s in the buyers’ minds, and then you have to connect the dots for the buyers so that they see your solution as being relevant to their most pressing problems,” Tulis said.
• “The questions a hotelier might care about might be, ‘How does this product make my guest experience better?’ or ‘How does this tool make my hotel business run more cost-effectively?'” Tuli said. “It’s probably not something like “How can I move to the cloud?'”
• “Canary has been doing all the things that hotels need their vendor to do to feel like the vendor is a partner and not someone who is just collecting checks off of them,” Tuli said. “When we did reference checks on Canary, I spoke to a couple of the brands who essentially said, ‘We would buy anything they make.'”

By now you may be asking what it is that Canary Technologies — F-Prime’s latest investment, actually does. Well, the startup performs a few tricks.

• Its first product replaced fax-and-paper third-party authorization forms with a digital authorization tool.
• Its later products can identify many guests automatically without the need for a staff member to check credit cards, forms of identification, or registration forms.
• The startup also offers upselling and messaging tools.

When I interviewed Kayak CEO Steve Hafner last month at Skift’s Megatrends launch ( podcast, here ), he said he was impressed by what tech vendor Toast had done for restaurants.

• “If you look at what Toast is doing on the restaurant side, they’re trying to build a restaurant operating system,” Hafner said. “Someone’s going to do that on the hotel side, too.”
• “There’s an opportunity for the platform tech companies to move into this space and make everything standard, particularly for independent hotels who can’t afford to do it themselves,” Hafner said.

Tuli thought Hafner’s metaphor was apt.

• “I can’t lie and say we didn’t think about Toast when we invested in Canary,” Tuli said. “And there’s a lot of opportunities ahead not just for Canary but for several interesting companies that are in the hotel tech space.”
• “Toast did a wonderful job of getting their first product, a point-of-sale system, into many, many, many restaurants fast,” Tuli said. “Then they said, ‘Hey, there’s more we can do to help your restaurant operation run more efficiently, like our inventory management software or our scheduling software or our payroll software.’ The sequence of development is just so admirable.”
• “Restaurants faced a similar predicament before startups like Toast and TouchBistro and others came in — which was that the legacy technology was just absolutely absurd,” Tuli said.
• “I have a ton of respect for Oracle and Micros and Infor and Agilysys and so on because they got us to this point,” Tuli said. “But the market has changed so much. You really can’t underestimate how much dissatisfaction hotels have now with the legacy offerings overall.”

What’s one travel tech startup that F-Prime regrets having not invested in?

• “ Mews is one I wish we had invested in,” Tuli said. “They’ve figured out how to break out.”

Another promising opportunity for hotel tech startups is in creating business intelligence tools.

• “The opportunity is to help hotels run their top line way better than they ever have thanks to a greater level of sophistication about what’s happening,” Tuli said. “The opportunity is to deliver the right information to the right constituents, especially at smaller hotel companies.”
• “The legacy tools from brands like TravelClick weren’t built to take into account a lot of the data we have today,” Tuli said. “They also lack intuitive, consumer-grade interfaces, which makes them hard to train new employees on.”

Tuli’s obviously a smart, influential investor. But he’s not clairvoyant because no one is. So here are a few caveats.

• The hotel tech space is crowded with new entrants and experienced vendors. Betting on the next breakout enterprise software player is always tricky.
• Lurking in the backdrop are well-capitalized tech platforms with deep links to the global hotel brands, such as Amadeus , which has signed Marriott International and InterContinental Hotels Group to its emerging operational software platform. Similarly, Oracle Hospitality has used the shift from on-premise to cloud-based systems as a chance to rethink everything top to bottom and has won praise from brands like Wyndham .
• Surprise entrants into hotel tech from outside the travel sector, such as Stripe or Salesforce, can’t be ruled out either.

I always read tips and feedback. Contact me at  [email protected]  or  [email protected] , or ask for my Signal account.

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Tags: avantstay , online travel agencies , startups , Travel Tech Briefing , travel technology