Articles tagged “funding”

Cruise lines in Europe are at somewhat of a crossroads, with a major brand like Norwegian saying its European cruise bookings are down and Carnival's CEO arguing Brexit could give UK cruising an edge. With more cruise lines shifting focus to China it will be interesting to watch if a European cruise site can continue commanding investor attention over others in China, for example.

This week's Delta Air Lines global outage puts a spotlight on the opportunity for startups such as AirHelp, which helps travelers deal with flight disruptions and makes a disjointed passenger experience less miserable.

Peek boasts that it provides a great booking experience on both desktop and mobile devices, which at this stage in the game is a must if tours and activities platforms hope to keep pace with consumer demands and behavior.

Cloudbed's recent venture round is in line with other small investments made in hotel software so far this year as investors are more cautious and focus on smaller funding amounts.

Travelers don't even need to download an app anymore to book a hotel or flight thanks to travel bots on the world's top messaging platforms. We still have a lot to learn about how consumers want to engage with travel messaging bots but already know that convenience is their paramount feature.

The Jeff Katz and Boston Consulting Group startup Dihedral -- with an assist from two major airlines and four hotel chains -- can turn out to be something huge or meander nowhere like some of the traveler journeys they'll be charting. Certainly the two have a track record and they are hitting all the right notes, including Big Data and experiences.

Adventure.com gambled on charging a 20 percent fee to guides, which was considerably higher than the going rate. Unanswered is whether the peer to peer concept in tours and activities really is viable on a large-scale basis.

It's theoretically a great time to be investing in and creating hospitality tech startups with more hotels wanting to drive direct bookings and online travel agencies interested in getting their piece of the pie. But several factors, such as uncertainty with stock markets around the world, are making investors more cautious about if, and how much, they invest in these companies.

The funding balance of power is changing as 67 percent of venture capital deals for travel tech startups took place outside the U.S. in the first half of 2016, although that was 3 percentage points lower than the year-earlier period. Funding for mobile-travel startups jumped 500 percent.

Several hotel companies are looking at digitizing the concierge experience so human concierge staff have more time to devote to complicated guest requests. It's still early to tell how this will pan out in the vacation rental market, which Key Concierge's is targeting.