travel
Thatch using $3M round to put travel creators on the map
The mobile app provides tools for travel creators to build their own travel-based businesses in order to curate, share and soon sell interactive travel guides and planning services.
Hopper raises $175M at $3.5B+ valuation as travel surges and its fintech tools help offset variant concerns
Travel tech company Hopper has raised a $175 million Series G, the company said today. That’s nearly the same amount it raised in a Series F round that closed earlier this…
Airbnb, DoorDash report earnings as COVID threatens to slow the IRL economy (again)
Both companies were heavily impacted by the onset of COVID-19: Airbnb saw its revenues collapse in 2020, while DoorDash managed a simply incredible 2020 as folks stayed home and ordered…
Holidu books $45M after growing its vacation rentals business ~50% YoY during COVID-19
Vacation rental startup Holidu has tucked $45 million in Series D funding into its suitcase — bringing its total raised since being founded back in 2014 to more than $120…
Persona lands $50M for identity verification after seeing 10x YoY revenue growth
The identity verification space has been heating up for a while and the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated demand with more people transacting online. Persona, a startup focused on creating…
Bandwango raises $3.1M to power tourism- and experience-focused deals
You might think that a startup whose primary customers are tourism bureaus would have had a pretty rough 2020, but CEO Monir Parikh said Bandwango‘s customer base more than doubled…
Collaborative iOS app Craft Docs secures $8M, led by Creandum and a ‘Skyscanner Mafia’
Launched in only November last year, the Craft Docs app — which was built from the ground up as an iOS app for collaborative documents — has secured an $8…
After similar moves for Shopping and Flights, Google makes hotel listings free
Last year, Google made a significant change to its Google Shopping destination by making it free for e-commerce retailers to sell on Google, when before the Shopping tab had been…
Aero, a startup backed by Garrett Camp’s startup studio Expa, has raised $20 million in Series A funding — right as CEO Uma Subramanian said demand for air travel is…
Travel startup GetYourGuide secures $97M revolving credit facility
Many countries hit hard by COVID-19 are beginning to see a glimmer of optimism from the arrival of vaccinations. Now, a promising travel startup that saw its growth arrested by…
Airbnb cancels all bookings for DC during Inauguration week
Airbnb won’t be hosting anyone in Washington DC during the week of the Presidential Inauguration, the company said in a statement. Brian Chesky took to Twitter to confirm the company’s…
Ahead of inauguration, Airbnb pledges bans for anyone involved in Capitol riot
Building on a policy that the company said has been in place since the Charlottesville protests back in 2017, Airbnb said it will take additional steps to beef up community…
Unicorn travel startup Hopper is facing a pandemic-fueled customer service nightmare
Mobile travel app Hopper has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers canceled their trips and airlines dropped their flights. But the complications around getting airline credits and…
Tripadvisor shares drop following China app ban
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced it has banned 105 mobile apps for violating Chinese internet regulations. While almost all of the apps are made by Chinese developers, American…
Featured Article
5 questions from Airbnb’s IPO filing
Airbnb filed to go public yesterday, offering the world a look into its financial performance over the past several years. The company’s S-1 detailed an expanding travel giant with billions in annual revenue that was severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. But past our overview of Airbnb’s core financial results and our look into which investors…
After a tumultuous year for the travel industry, Airbnb’s long-awaited IPO filing just dropped. One thing is clear: there is still plenty of juice left in the home-sharing platform, and…
Reposite streamlines the most tedious tasks for travel agents
Meet Reposite, a software-as-a-service startup that wants to help travel agents of all kinds deal with their daily tasks. While the travel agency industry is huge, most people who work…
GetYourGuide closes $133M convertible note as travel startups continue to weather the COVID-19 storm
On the heels of Germany announcing another lockdown to try to contain the rapid rise in COVID-19 cases in the country, one of the hottest startups in its capital city…
Merging Airbnb and the traditional hotel model, Mexico City’s Casai raises $23 million to grow in Latin America
With travel and tourism rising across Latin America, Casai, a startup combining Airbnb single unit rentals with hotel room amenities, has raised $23 million to expand its business across Latin…
Featured Article
Understanding Airbnb’s summer recovery
New numbers concerning Airbnb’s summer performance were reported this week, with The Information adding to the performance figures that Bloomberg previously detailed earlier this year. Airbnb announced that it filed privately to pursue a debut this August. We have yet to see its public IPO filing, but, all the same, the flotation is coming. The Exchange…
Airbnb nears IPO as Asana and Palantir land their direct listings
World events have so far not stopped the enthusiasm for tech investing, and really, where else are those dollars going to go?
Prosus Ventures leads $13 million investment in Pakistan’s ride-hailing giant Bykea
Bykea, which leads the ride-hailing market in Pakistan, has raised $13 million in a new financing round as the four-year-old startup looks to deepen its penetration in the South Asian…
Travel activities platform KKday raises $75 million Series C as it focuses on ‘staycations’
With lockdowns around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the travel industry especially hard. In Asia, however, several startups are adapting by focusing on domestic activities (or “staycations”) instead…
Berbix, an ID verification startup that was founded by former members of the Airbnb Trust and Safety team, today announced that it has raised a $9 million Series A round…
After early-COVID layoffs, Hipcamp is buying competition, hiring
When shelter-in-place was first announced in the United States, most companies in the travel space saw bookings drop. Some shuttered. Hipcamp, a San Francisco-based startup that provides private land for…
Mastercard acquired and shut down IfOnly, an experiences marketplace hit by COVID-19
Travel has undoubtedly been one of the industries hardest hit in the coronavirus pandemic, constrained by restrictions on how people can move between and within countries, many venues closing, new…
Airbnb declares all parties over indefinitely at its listings
Airbnb has been implementing measures to help limit hosting of unauthorized parties at listings booked through its platform, and today it implemented the strictest of all: a global ban on…
Omio takes $100M to shuttle through the coronavirus crisis
Multimodal travel platform Omio (formerly GoEuro) has raised $100M in late stage funding to help see its business through the coronavirus crisis. It also says it’s eyeing potential M&A opportunities…
Indonesia-based online travel portal, Traveloka, has picked up $250M in fresh funding to beef up its coronavirus-battered balance sheet. The travel aggregator dubs the capital injection a “strong vote of…
Spring 2020 was gloomy for Klook. As countries closed their borders and went into complete or partial lockdown, the SoftBank-backed travel platform saw its revenue plummet by as much as…
