Articles tagged “funding”

To call a company the best-capitalized hotel tech startup might seem like pointing out the tallest leprechaun. But while SiteMinder serves only about 36,000 hotels out of a million worldwide, new funding from cash-rich investor BlackRock could fuel the hotel connectivity startup's growth substantially.

This week, travel startups DAQ Soft, The Guild, Shep, Hellotickets, Bob, Beonprice, Whizar, IceLolly, and Your Rentals raised funding. It's great that angel investors continue to support early-stage companies.

The travel industry has at least 10 young private companies that have each raised more than $500 million so far while continuing to seek an exit for their investors. That's a remarkable boom in travel startups compared with a decade ago.

This week, travel startups, including TravelFlan, Beachy, HalalBooking, and GuruWalk, announced more than $63 million in funding. Most notably, Domio disclosed a $50 million Series B round, underscoring the ongoing growth in the short-term rental of apartments with hotel-style services.

Tourism promotion is in a tough spot in the U.S. The axing of Pure Michigan, a popular and award-winning campaign, is a good example of the reasons why.

This week, travel startups announced more than $139 million in funding for concepts including extended-stay corporate housing, short-term rental-style pop-up hotels, co-living spaces, and landing ports for flying taxis.

This week, travel startups announced more than $101 million in funding for a range of concepts, including cross-border payments technology, short-term property management services, digital marketing help, and hotel tech.

Is there anything that Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip) won't do? LvYue Hotel Group is its upscale counterpart to Oyo, a set of hotel brands run in partnership with local operators in 10 Asian countries and run on cloud-based software.

This week, travel startups Travelio, Refundit, and Nowaday together announced more than $31 million in funding. Of particular note is Amadeus' backing of Refundit. The startup offers visitors to European Union countries a mobile app to speed up their claims for rebates for value-added taxes paid on retail shopping.

WeWork's implosion is putting pressure on all of SoftBank's investments, Oyo included. If it's not changing course already, the budget hotel chain may soon have to decide whether, as CEO Ritesh Agarwal put it, to grow fast or grow right.