Travel Technology tips

Saudi Tourism Authority and Ant Group have signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) to explore introducing Alipay+, a suite of unified global mobile payment and marketing solutions, to Saudi Arabia, aiming to provide a seamless mobile payment experience for Asian tourists in Saudi and beyond and to further expand Alipay+’s global coverage.

Ahead of the Web in Travel Singapore event on October 2-4, titled The Human Revolution, three travel leaders have a go at responding to the show’s big debate – will artificial intelligence make us more or less human? For more on the debate, tune into the show’s most anticipated closing session.  For now, a few experts gave us their two cents.

San José Mineta International Airport (SJC) has launched a pilot scheme featuring BBGO, a fully autonomous personal mobility vehicle from Blueberry Technology.

Trip.com Group today showcased its vision for the future of travel at its Envision 2023 global partner conference. The conference was attended by about 700 industry partners globally.

The Finnish Border Guard will allow passengers on selected Finnair flights to and from the UK to pass through border control at Helsinki Airport using new Digital Travel Credentials (DTC) from 28 August 2023.

Three startups involved in the travel industry announced fundraises this week totalling more than $316 million.

When George Limbert began as president of Red Roof, he met with franchise operators of the hotel brand to better understand what was going well — and what was not. 

Busbud, an online marketplace for bus and other ground transport tickets, is now offering more software services to operators in that industry following a company acquisition. 

Travelport is planning to sell its Hotelzon division to corporate travel agency startup TripStax, which was officially launched earlier this year — by two former execs at Travelport.

Five travel tech startups announced $62.1 million in funding this week.

Yanolja said this week it expected that a post-pandemic rebound in international travel will continue to boost its twin businesses of online travel sales via a superapp and software sales to hotels and other travel companies. The South Korea-based startup has made progress on both ambitions since 2011, when it received a $1.7 billion investment from the Softbank Vision Fund in a transaction that valued Yanolja at the time at approximately US$9 billion.

>>Ukio, a Barcelona-based short-term rental platform focused on remote workers, has raised $28 million (€27 million) in a Series A round of funding.

The non-air products that Amadeus offers are the closest to recovering to 2019 revenue levels.

Red Roof, Motel 6, and Extended Stay have all implemented software to reduce the need for workers. 

Three startups working in travel tech announced nearly $17 million in funding this week.

Big Tech companies are laying off tens of thousands of people. 

Skift kept an eye through much of 2022 on which travel tech startups raised money, documented in this weekly startup funding roundup. 

Opinions vary widely about the state of investment in the travel tech startup world during this uncertain economic time, but one thing is for sure: it’s changing.

Before booking a trip with Celebrity Cruises, potential customers can now explore a virtual version of the experience — an offering that the company expects is the beginning of a long journey expanding operations in the metaverse. 

Corporate travel agencies are facing new pressures to separate their bundled services from company travel managers looking to cut costs and add flexibility.

The hotel tech startup Mews has completed five acquisitions in the past three years. Its CEO, Richard Valtr, told Skift last week that there are two more underway.