Articles tagged “funding”

This is a blow to national tourism marketing organizations worldwide -- including our own BrandUSA -- and could spur a rethink worldwide on how to fund tourism promotion.

In the eyes of the boating industry, BoatBound is a gateway drug for early adopters who will hopefully grow attached to the experience and become lucrative customers later in life.

Reputation management firms such as ReviewPro are evolving into being more than reputation management firms as the competition heats up. One of the key issues for hotels is that many of these tools aren't truly global, failing to tie into Chinese social networks, for example, and working only in a limited number of languages.

Top10.com fits into the travel industry curation trend as its recommendations are geared to help people looking for a room combat information overload. It's a crowded space, though, with an over-abundance of hotel search and booking sites to compete with.

The GuestDriven platform intersects two unstoppable trends -- personalization and mobile. The trick is in providing guests with personalized tips and perks on their mobile devices without invading their privacy or bombarding them with advertisements in the process.

Although a stretch, GetYourGuide has frequently likened its desire to ramp up and aggregate the most tours and activities it can for each destination to that of Booking.com. Along with the founder of Qunar, GetYourGuide now has a Booking.com veteran, its former CEO, on board to help in the tour and activities company's expansion efforts.

Business travelers are increasingly ignoring corporate travel tools and turning to online booking sites and apps to save money and increase their rewards. Rocketmiles' mission aligns well with this traveler set that will continue to drive the startup's growth.

Both unmanaged and managed business travelers are turning to their own mobile apps for bookings presenting an opportunity for previously non-travel apps to increase their own value by adding travel-related tools.

There are hundreds of social travel startups that are attempting to tie the inspiration, planning, or sharing stages of travel to users' social networks. Minube started earlier and includes a full scope of features that can make it a one-stop shop for users.

OTP already enjoys a following, which is critical to its growth as those followers become early users that will help build the brand beyond a blog to a multi-city guide and app.