Startups

The next phase of travel investment will focus a lot more on B2B than disrupting the consumer, helping existing large travel brands on the backend and also helping them reach customers more efficiently.

Airlines have long-neglected cross-sell opportunities, but in recent years they've contracted with third-parties to move things along. Boxever's funding and Tigerair deal can be seen in this context.

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.

While some erroneously looked to Expedia to take tours and activities mainstream, Groupon, if it survives, is making the first move.

Startups that design a product with a target customer in mind often have more success than those that attempt to build a broad travel product with little thought to what their users need and want.

For being one of the biggest source markets of travelers for the rest of the world, Europe still has a long way to go to build up travel startups into larger, long-lasting and successful companies. The biggest successes may end up coming out of Russia rather than the rest of Europe.

The global travel industry is going through a lot of disruption, and the biggest sectors include the sharing economy and ground transportation, as well as one large potential winner in the hotel booking sector.

The generation that came of age indebted may aspire to ownership, but it is willing to settle for access to such things instead.

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.