Inspired by the Workation trend seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, here is the first “Work from Wherever Index”. The rank has been published by Kayak after analyzing different data points from 111 countries and showing the best countries where travelers can combine productive working conditions and opportunities for travel adventures. Go, digital nomads!
Acting just like a personal travel assistant, Origin is an app-based solution that combines technology and human expertise to plan trips for its members. The travel startup has now raised $5 million to make travel planning more simple and less time consuming.
As our friends over at EU-Startups are gearing up to host their annual flagship event in Barcelona in May 12-13, we got a discount code for all FutureTravel subscribers <3 With the code FT25OFF you get 25% off when purchasing your ticket. They will be announcing keynote speakers and agenda soon, but I can already say that it would be amazing to meet many of you at this year’s EU-Startups Summit.
There have been quite a few airlines launching during 2021. And here is an interesting article highlighting some of them. I’ll be keeping an eye for stories on these new players and I’m curious to see how they will shape the future of the aviation sector.
This time of the year we can find many articles talking about trends, things to watch, to pay attention, to align with business strategy. This post from Mario Gavira (VP Growth Kiwi.com) is a very valuable overview of what we might see when it comes down to Online Travel Trends during this year.
TUI Group will be working together with Mobi Systems, implementing machine learning technology to keep their transfer platform up to date with real-time data for flights, traffic, weather, vehicle inventory and customer bookings. The solution was tested last year and is being launched in Palma de Mallorca this month.
Table of Contents
- The future of the creator economy: shared ownership and control
- A blockchain enabled home sharing platform
- Three Web3 Travel Tech Startups
- Web3’s Pareto Funtier: More fun making money, and more money having fun
- Airbnb’s $10 billion engineer
- Brian Chesky asked, twitter responded
- US Airline Industry Review
- The Icelandverse
- Fundraising
Imagine an Airbnb-like platform owned by the hosts and guests. According to Li Jin, co-founder at Variant Fund, the next step is for creators to build, operate and own the products and platforms they rely on, shifting the balance of power between platforms and their users. In 2022, Li Jin thinks that decentralised networks serving the creator economy will reach a tipping-point. For innovators, rewarding users with ownership through token distribution can help attract the enormous user bases that will enable these new platforms to outcompete existing, centralised ones. Creator ownership eliminates the conflict between platforms and participants and ensures that growth benefits all stakeholders. Read + The Economist.
A blockchain enabled home sharing platform
Dtravel is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), owned and governed by its community of hosts, guests and token holders. By using real-value tokens to incentivize contributors, Dtravel wants to become the first true home sharing economy. The extent to which community members can contribute under the Support-to-Earn model will be based on each member’s time commitment, expertise and loyalty. Read more.
Three Web3 Travel Tech Startups
A few weeks ago I reached out to DTravel, Xeniapp and Weyout—three travel startups trying new models around blockchain, web3 and creator economy—to ask them about what they are building and how their approach differs from what is currently available.
Web3’s Pareto Funtier: More fun making money, and more money having fun
There are a lot of reasons – technological, financial, psychological, emotional, and more – that more and more people have been drawn to web3, but Packy McCormick thinks that think the simplest is this: Web3 pushes the Pareto Funtier outwards by baking money into fun things and fun into money things. Read more.
Airbnb’s $10 billion engineer
Nate Blecharczyk is Airbnb’s technical cofounder worth $10 billion thanks to his Airbnb stock. This is a good deep dive on how he’s using his engineering mindset and an army of data scientists to solve the company’s most challenging problems. Read more.
Brian Chesky asked, twitter responded
Brian Chesky asked on twitter: If Airbnb could launch anything in 2022, what would it be? He got plenty of responses. These are the replies (ordered by likes) that Brian acknowledged with “cool idea”, “we are looking into this” or similar.
US Airline Industry Review
Thorough research report on the state of the US airline industry. Trends in traffic, fares, operations, profitability, costs and financial performance. Includes many charts such as how the share of global carrier airlines, low cost, ultra low cost and niche carriers has evolved over the years.
The Icelandverse
“Introducing the Icelandverse” is a funny travel campaign from Iceland, making fun of Facebook’s name change to Meta and Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of all of us interacting in a virtual three-dimensional world through avatars.
Fundraising
- Alternative accommodation platform AvantStay raised a Series B round of $160 million led by Tarsadia Investments and 3L Capital, following a Series A round of $20 million in September 2019.
- GrowPro, the Spanish startup focused on facilitating international education experiences, raised €1 million (news in Spanish) in a round led by Angels Capital, the investment arm of Juan Roig