Things might have been challenging for the team at Kiwi.com this past week: First, Ryanair accused them of issuing fake boarding passes. Now, KLM sent a letter asking them to stop selling their tickets.
Sojern and WBR Insights published a new report entitled “How Travel Marketers Are Activating Digital Advertising in 2021”. This called my attention while reading it: 88% of the travel companies that took part on this research either increased or maintain their budget for digital marketing strategy since COVID-19 started.
The Swiss-German startup RoomPriceGenie helps clients to increase revenues by automating pricing decisions. In the past 12 months, they tripled their revenues and now they raised €1.8 million to keep growing.
There has been some serious discussion about companies requiring employees to get vaccinated. Now Delta Air Lines will charge unvaccinated employees with $200 every month.
Some situations can make us feel a bit stuck wondering how can we actively do something to help – for me, the recent situation in Afghanistan was one of these. So it was great to see Airbnb’s social initiative of offering temporarily housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees.
The number of travel and mobility startups has grown 5% so far in 2021 compared with 2020 – this data is from a recent report published by TNMT this month. Here is another insight we are (already) excited about: travel startup investment is expected to be $44B in 2021. This is really great news.
In March Hopin announced a $400 million investment round. Now the event management platform has raised an extra $450 million. With this money, the company has been on acquisition-spree and now plans to use the funds to accelerate their growth. Now… that’s fast. I mean, they were founded in 2019! Awesome!
In order to help hotels, resorts and vacation rental managers to improve how they interact with their guests, SendSquared has raised $1 million. The US-based startup will use the funds to further grow their marketing communications platform for hotels and resorts.
It can be overwhelming to try to keep up with all the COVID-19 info out there, right? I feel you. I bumped into this amazing dashboard created by Information is Beautiful and thought it deserved it’s own space here on the newsletter. Take it as a (beautiful) reminder of everything we’ve already been through since the beginning of the pandemic.
Casai, a Mexico City-based startup which manages short-term rentals mainly for leisure travelers, is now expanding into serviced apartments for corporate travelers. By announcing the acquisition of the Brazilian operations of Q Apartments, they strengthen the goal to make Brazil their biggest market until the end of the year.
With the mission to revolutionise the travel industry for people with disabilities, Wheel the World has raised $2 million in its seed round. Through their platform, the startup makes it easier for travelers with disabilities to book places to stay and things to do. The company will also work with hotels and tours to attract this new segment of travelers and how to work with people who have disabilities.
Slovakian-based NextRetreat is launching the first “all-in-one” solution for organising team travel. Where many platform work with a traveler in mind, NextRetreat was designed exclusively for teams. In times of so many people working from home, traveling with the team is definitely a hot topic right now.
You might have heard about a report that was released in the last days about global warming happening faster than we all thought. Here is an opinion piece from Kit Brennan (founder of Thrust Carbon) on what this might mean for the travel industry. Is your company taking action about it, ? I’d love to hear more about it.
Short-term rental company Frontdesk has raised $7 million and sets up to “fuel-the-fire and emerge from the pandemic as leaders in the booming short-term rental space”, as Kyle Weatherly (CEO) announced.