Startups

The pandemic has paradoxically catalyzed many travel startups. Swiss startup Nomady has seen growth by offering outdoor camping to domestic Swiss travelers. Meanwhile, Tokyo-based Cuicin has helped hotels with contactless check-in.

Imagine there's no distribution. It's easy if you try. Imagine there's no commission. All bookings, peer-to-peer. You may say Fetch.Ai is a dreamer. But it's not the only one. This startup hopes someday you'll join it, and hotels will sell as one.

This week, travel startups announced more than $215 million in investment. The funded concepts include travel management for small businesses, property management software for vacation rental managers in China, and luxury vacation rentals in India.

"There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen," Lenin once said. That seems true for the concept of remote working. Decades of talk about a revolution in remote working suddenly became a global experiment. So how will Remote Year adapt for workers hopscotching destinations?

Klook is winning investor confidence during the pandemic. The online agency is tapping into domestic leisure spending in several Asian markets while aspiring to copy some moves from Chinese superapp Meituan by providing more business-to-business services, too.

The pace and extent of computerization varied in 2025. In countries that permitted it, some corporations automated their employees out of jobs without much hesitation. Workers needed to hone new skills as artificial intelligence threatened their livelihoods while others firms invested in retraining their staffs.

If airlines and hotels end up cutting back too much, they would risk providing plenty of opportunities for new companies to emerge, fill gaps, and gobble up market share. But a faster recovery in corporate travel would make this issue moot for a lot of companies.

This week, travel startups announced more than $176 million in funding. Concepts included corporate travel, hotel robots, and channel management for vacation rentals.

Airlines are increasingly using application programming interfaces, or APIs, to distribute their fares. That could let Amazon and other companies more easily sell tickets. That opens up an opportunity for tech players.

Enthusiasm for IPOs is booming in the wake of Airbnb's sensational debut as a public company. But only a handful of startups, possibly including Turo, Traveloka, Yanolja, Gett, Tujia, SiteMinder, Sonder, and Vacasa, may have enough positive growth in 2021 to woo investors.