Articles tagged “funding”

Context is a scholarly tour business betting that digital marketing will let it replicate its model profitably worldwide. Other experiential tour businesses will watch with a skeptical (but hopeful) eye.

Startups in India and Turkey have benefited from investment by venture capital firms located outside those countries. That's a trend that's a mixed blessing.

Travel startups raised more than $72 million this week. The most promising of these is Treebo, which is banking on branded hotel networks as a niche in India.

Among the latest travel companies to receive funding, RedAwning and WanderJaunt are applying aspects of hotel franchising to home renting. Other companies will likely pile onto these experiments.

FabHotel's franchise model joins peers OYO and Treebo in a promising effort to tame the famously fractured budget segment in India by applying consistent standards of service and marketing.

Dosh says it has 55 people working on letting travelers earn cash back on the money they spend on business trips, while Hoperator has debuted to bring AI tools to hotel chat. Each has promise.

While tourism board funding has been a mixed bag around the world in recent years, it's evident tourism boards aren't losing focus on strategies like video and more deeply engaging with the local community.

New tech is going to vastly improve the efficiency of booking business trips, selling tours, and running short-term rentals. But it's too soon to know if these three freshly funded companies, in particular, will pull off the trick.

Investors used to be skittish about hospitality-tech startups. But this week's multi-million dollar investment rounds in Keypr, Pillow, and Cloudbeds suggest that the lodging software sector is maturing and isn't just about hotels anymore.

At long last, Florida's tourism industry knows its fate. While Visit Florida will have enough funding to keep the lights on in the coming year, it faces a litany of new procedures and restrictions that will likely send reverberations to other state capitals across the U.S.