Where are they now? Revisiting the Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2025


It’s been a year since PhocusWire named its Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2025.

As we gear up to announce our class of 2026 startups, we have been checking in with all of the past classes of standout alumni of Hot 25 Travel Startups from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

In addition to new product launches, some of the startups have also been part of acquisitions. Travel advisor services provider Lucia was bought by Tern for an undisclosed, all-cash sum in June. Additionally, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered trip planner Mindtrip acquired Thatch, a platform that offers guides from travel content creators and local experts, for an undisclosed amount.

For our final check-in before we introduce the Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2026, we asked founders from last year’s class to tell us two things: their companies’ highlights of 2025 and their priorities for 2026. We heard back from 18 of the companies.

Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

AncillaryBox

AncillaryBox allows airlines to offer high-quality and high-margin tourism experience content instantly and at scale.

Responses from co-founder Max Reilly: 

2025 highlights: 2025 was a great year for us, signing our first airlines and launching first our MVP and then a more enhanced product.  We launched our first airline, Fiji Airways, which has proved a great experience. Fiji Airways itself is very creative, having joined the American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flier program and developed an innovative stopover program, both of which aligned perfectly to our solution.   

The launch of Fiji Airways led to a lot of interest from other airlines, and we built a pipeline of new airline clients with the help of a strategic partnership with Seabury airline advisors for distribution throughout the industry.   

Our backend solution is now nicely scalable, allowing us to launch new airlines within three to four weeks. Watch out for another airline launch later in November. Finally, we will finish the year with a profit which has allowed us to postpone a Series A round to 2026.

2026 priorities: Our priorities for development in 2026 have changed based demands from our airline clients. Our new priorities are focused on strengthening our core product and deploying two new enhancements which will drive even greater margin: AI driven dynamic bundles and a new loyalty currency initiative. We also plan to leverage the Seabury network to further expand our client base (Seabury worked with more than 30 airlines last year, which gives us great exposure and provides a virtual distribution channel). We will do a Series A round in 2026 to allow us scale faster to ensure we meet development targets and can continue to sign more airlines. 

Chain4Travel

Chain4Travel is the initiator of the decentralized operating system Camino Network, fostering digital innovation and solving the connectivity issue for global travel with a unique travel standard.

Responses from CEO Pablo Castillo:

2025 highlights: 2025 has been a year of growth for Camino Network and Chain4Travel:

  • Launch of Camino Messenger and early adoption enabling wallet-to-wallet bookings, payments and secure supplier communication directly between travel partners. During a hackathon organized by Lufthansa Group and selected distribution partners of them, they found that the Camino Messenger is 98% cheaper, 75% faster to integrate, 50% greener and has a 25% faster response time than traditional GDS distribution from an airline perspective.
  • Agentic commerce progress, with the first AI-driven travel agents booking real inventory through Camino as a trusted execution layer
  • Ecosystem expansion to more than 250 travel and technology partners, from airlines, DMCs and hotel groups to travel agencies and travel technology and service providers
  • Operational and network growth, with rising on-chain transaction volumes approaching five Mio live transactions and a strong global validator community, ensuring high performance and resilience
  • Advances in payments and settlement, including pilots for instant settlement of travel services via smart contracts and stablecoins and new collaborations with Monerium, ING, SAP, Bakuun and European Central Bank
  • Rising industry visibility and hosting of various Hackathons (decode.travel), Keynotes and our annual event, Travel Un’chained, in Greece where over 170 travel industry experts joined us to listen to keynotes of ING, SAP, Amazon, Visit Qatar, MTS and various other travel companies building on Camino
  • Being nominated as part of the Aptitude project, the large scale rollout for the EU ID wallet where Chain4travel acts as a use case leader and collaborates with partners from the network to develop EU ID wallet compatible projects

2026 priorities:

  • Scale adoption of Camino Messenger into core travel processes: contracting, distribution, payments and service automation
  • Commercial rollout of AI travel agents connected to the Camino Messenger to drive real booking volumes and measurable revenue impact for partners
  • Deepen integration into airline, hotel systems and other travel product/content providers, connecting distribution and settlement directly to on-chain identity and wallet infrastructure
  • Accelerate developer ecosystem with grants, hackathons and a powerful toolkit to enable new products built on Camino
  • Strengthen compliance and trust frameworks, working closely with industry alliances and regulators
  • Ecosystem growth in Asia, MENA and U.S. as geographic priorities

D3x.ai

D3x is an AI-driven platform that elevates the hospitality industry by blending AI with human-centric interactions.

Responses from CEO Jason Noronha:

2025 highlights:

  • AI outperforms human agents in guest satisfaction: This year our AI platform’s customer satisfaction score surpassed that of human agents. Across hundreds of hotels using D3x, guests consistently rated their AI-driven interactions higher than those with staff. This is a watershed moment for us—there’s no going back now that AI is delivering service quality that even beats human teams.
  • Enterprise adoption and industry leadership: The largest hotel chains in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands chose our AI solution to automate their guest service. We’re thrilled by this trust from industry leaders. It affirms that our focus on security, data governance and performance is best in class, and it’s cementing D3x as the enterprise leader in AI customer service for hotels.

2026 priorities:

  • Voice as the next frontier: We’re confident in our messaging AI, so our top priority now is voice. The next step is a voice AI solution tailored to hospitality and ready for enterprise scale. Many of our customers handle over 200,000 phone calls a year, and we want our AI to answer those calls by default, handing them off to a human agent only when necessary.
  • Enterprise-grade reliability: Achieving this at scale means focusing on reliability and transparency. We’re investing heavily in observability, consistency and robust reporting for our voice AI. The technology is evolving rapidly, but our goal is to turn these weekly advances into a rock-solid tool that hotels can trust 24/7. 
  • Deep integration and complex workflows: We’re going beyond flashy demos to build a voice agent that seamlessly integrates with hotel systems (call center software, PMS, CRM, etc.) and handles multi-step requests. For example, if a guest asks, “Can you add my company name to my invoice and send it via WhatsApp?,” our AI will be able to execute that end-to-end. In short, we’re making sure voice AI isn’t just a novelty but a dependable part of daily hotel operations.

Eco.mio

Eco.mio helps companies save their emissions from business travel and reduce their travel costs.

Responses from CEO Katharina Riederer:

2025 highlights:

  • More than doubled revenue in less than six months, onboarding new enterprise clients joining us in rethinking how business travel decisions are made across global teams
  • Launched our BahnBonus partnership with Deutsche Bahn, making it possible for employees to earn BahnBonus points for choosing greener travel options
  • Introduced our BCD Travel sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) partnership, enabling clients to directly support SAF projects through their travel programs
  • Altogether, 2025 marked a shift from awareness to action, showing that behavioral change at scale is not only possible but already happening—and paying off for those who’re taking advantage. Building on collaborations with partners like Deutsche Bahn and BCD Travel, we’ll continue to integrate behavioral insights and guidance directly into the traveler experience.

2026 priorities:

  • Expanding our portfolio: After five years of studying how to influence travel behavior effectively, we’re now building on that foundation to expand our product offering (more to be announced later this year). Our focus remains the same: helping enterprises make better travel decisions—faster, smarter and more aligned with company goals.
  • Scaling proven impact: With the Eco.mio Impact Suite, our existing solution that nudges and engages travelers, reduces CO2 and rewards sustainable behavior. We’ve already shown how behavioral science can drive real change. In 2026, we’ll scale this success further, empowering more enterprises to bridge the gap between travel policy and traveler action.
  • 2026 will be a defining year for Eco.mio as we expand our next-generation portfolio and take our mission from nudging to guiding travel behavior at scale.

ExpectMe

ExpectMe is a room selection platform that unlocks hidden revenue, elevates guest satisfaction and supports staff efficiency.

Responses from CEO Roeland Verhamme: 

2025 highlights: 2025 has been a milestone year for ExpectMe. We successfully closed our first deal with a major hotel group owning and managing over 500 hotels, demonstrating both the market potential for room selection and the trust leading hoteliers place in our solution. Our new integration with Opera Cloud, one of the leading PMS in the market, enables hotels to offer real-time, fully automated, interactive room selection, enhancing guest satisfaction and operational efficiency. Being named a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2025 was a proud recognition of our progress and our impact in making room selection the norm within the industry. 

2026 priorities: In 2026, our focus is on scaling further and optimizing the platform based on customer feedback, making our offering even stronger. Our goal is to deliver a compelling, integrated solution that enhances the entire guest journey and provides hotels with a powerful tool to drive loyalty, personalization and operational excellence.

Faye

Faye is a travel platform redefining insurance and assistance, enabling smarter and smoother trip taking. 

Responses from co-founder and CEO Elad Schaffer:

2025 highlights:

2026 priorities:

  • Building out our in-app loyalty program, which already includes lounge access and eSIMs
  • Expanding into more travel verticals, including luxury and cruise
  • Expanding our U.S. HQ headcount in Richmond, Virginia, by 35%
  • Increasingly driving the implementation of AI across the claims process to accelerate our already speedy turnaround times and ensure travelers get reimbursed quickly when they need it most—including while they are still in-trip
  • Taking the Faye Wallet even further; it’s already the first-of-its-kind digital card for travel insurance payments in the U.S., and you’ll be seeing more features here that will enable travelers to not only avoid out-of-pocket costs by being reimbursed instantly for common travel disruptions but to also rely on its perks for spending abroad.

HyperGuest

HyperGuest is a B2B direct distribution platform that through a single connectivity channel enables hoteliers to connect with thousands of travel and technology partners.

Responses from VP of supply integration and strategic partnership Enzo Aita:

2025 highlights: In 2025, HyperGuest solidified its position as the global benchmark for direct B2B distribution in hospitality. With over 80% growth in dynamically connected hotels, our platform empowered thousands of properties to transition from static contracts to real-time, more profitable bookings. This impact was amplified by major group adoptions, driving higher ADR, stronger booking confidence and improved operational efficiency. Our advanced virtual credit card payment solution ensured secure, zero-risk transactions, while dynamic contracting tools cut onboarding time by more than 50%. On the travel provider side, adoption surged as midsize and large players leveraged HyperGuest to access fresh supply through seamless integration and real-time inventory.

2026 priorities: HyperGuest is focused on expanding its marketplace intelligence layer—introducing predictive demand insights and AI-powered matchmaking between hotels and travel providers. We aim to deepen collaboration with technology providers and channel managers to strengthen seamless connectivity across fragmented systems. Strategic expansion into underserved travel segments and emerging markets will further enhance reach and profitability for our partners. HyperGuest remains committed to restoring trust and transparency in B2B hospitality distribution—empowering every stakeholder to work directly and dynamically, with confidence.

InterLnkd

InterLnkd aims to integrate the travel industry with the fashion, beauty and retail sectors.

Responses from CEO Barry Klipp:

2025 highlights: We continued to build on our partner traction and improve our intelligent matching engine, finessing our conversion KPIs, which drew a new revenue stream to new travel partners. We expanded into multiple new markets with our first solution, TravelStylist, and also expanded into new travel verticals by building digital shopping marketplaces for car hire companies. We launched our second solution, AirMall, the first global dynamic digital retail solution that enables airlines to monetize their onboard Wi-Fi connectivity, and struck a major distribution partnership with Viasat, a leader in in-flight connectivity across over 60 major airlines.

2026 priorities: We will launch AirMall with our first airline at the start of the year, expanding our market coverage to over 20 markets, and further develop encouraging conversations driving AirMall growth as the industry ramps up its own onboard Wi-Fi capabilities.

iWander

iWander provides travel brands with AI-powered travel companions.  

Responses from CEO Marius Nigond:

2025 highlights: 2025 was a landmark year for iWander. We successfully launched our AI travel companion with our first major partner, City Sightseeing, the global leader in hop-on hop-off experiences. Embedded directly within the City Sightseeing app, our AI companion has seen strong adoption, with 20% of customers engaging with the AI and generating a wealth of valuable user insights.

We also completed beta testing of our AI walking tour SDK, a breakthrough technology that empowers travelers to create their own guided audio tours. Early results have been fantastic, and the SDK will soon be integrated into the City Sightseeing app. After 18 months of intensive development, the true highlight of 2025 was seeing our product come to life, real travelers using iWander to explore cities, enjoying the experience and spending thousands of hours engaging with our platform.

2026 Priorities: Looking ahead, our focus is twofold.

  1. Continuous innovation: We’ll keep refining our AI technology to deliver even more personalized and meaningful in-destination experiences.
  2. Strategic partnerships: With proven engagement, retention and data insights, we’re ready to scale with some new partners who share our vision of transforming travel engagement.

Levee

Levee aims to revolutionize hotel operations by solving inconsistent and incomplete data capture from deskless workers like housekeepers and maintenance staff. 

Responses from CEO Al Lagunas:

2025 highlights: The biggest highlight of 2025 was being named a 2025 Global Startup Pitch winner by Phocuswright. Winning the North America award at Phocuswright Barcelona brought a ton of great press our way and now getting the opportunity to present at the Phocuswright Conference next month will help to propel us even further.

Below are a few more highlights from this year:

  • Awarded Top Travel & Hospitality Startup (Seed) in North America by Phocuswright
  • Won both “Judge’s Choice” and “People’s Choice” Awards at HITEC’s E20X

2026 priorities: As far as 2026 goals, we are hyper-focused on growth and platform expansion. We spent much of 2025 growing strategically and finding the customers that were the best fit for our current product offerings. Now that we understand that, we want to push aggressively into those market segments and begin growing. In regard to platform expansion, we’re expanding our applications to include employee training and onboarding, performance tracking, inventory management and facility management. There’s plenty more on the roadmap but not yet ready to share all of it.

Mindtrip

Mindtrip is an AI-powered travel platform that makes it easy to organize any adventure.

Responses from CMO Michelle Denogean:

2025 highlights: 2025 has been a breakout year for Mindtrip. While we still have some exciting announcements to come, a few highlights stand out:

  • Expanded our reach—grew our consumer audience by more than 10x and introduced innovative new features like Start Anywhere, Collections and Receipt Upload that make travel planning feel effortless
  • Acquired and integrated 40K+ travel guides through our Thatch acquisition, adding a layer of human-curated validation and social proof to our AI-powered recommendations
  • Launched our iOS app—the ultimate on-trip companion to explore what’s nearby, with seamless tools to save travel inspiration for future trips
  • Enriched travel and local exploration with our new events feature, helping users discover what’s happening wherever they are—from concerts and sporting events to comedy clubs and farmers markets
  • Partnered with over 35 forward-thinking destinations including Brand USA, Visit California, Visit Costa Rica, Discover Puerto Rico, Visit Orlando, Visit Myrtle Beach, New Orleans & Co and See Monterey, bringing conversational trip planning to DMO websites across the globe
  • Secured strategic investment from American Express and other leading travel partners, reinforcing confidence in our vision for the future of AI-powered travel
  • Honored as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies of 2025 and recognized as Travel Tech AI Company of the Year

2026 priorities: As we look ahead, we’re focused on continuing to build momentum while staying true to our mission of making travel planning more personalized, connected and actionable.

  • Roll out our new Trip Hub—one place to save all of your travel inspo, chats, itineraries and travel preferences
  • Scale our Mindtrip for Destinations business—including Europe and other international markets and deeper partnerships with leading DMOs
  • Roll out Mindtrip for Hotels, helping properties delight guests and inspire them to explore both on-property and beyond through the power of AI
  • Travel concierge for enterprise partners—from credit card and airline programs to major media platforms—to create more seamless, personalized travel experiences for the connected trip
  • Launch of agentic AI capabilities (Q1) to deliver more proactive, intelligent travel assistance across the Mindtrip platform by orchestrating complex travel tasks on behalf of the traveler
  • Scale our consumer business by deepening brand awareness, driving adoption and helping more travelers experience the joy of planning with Mindtrip and the AI travel companion while on the trip

NomadHer

NomadHer is the community app for solo female travelers, encouraging safe travel.

Responses from CEO Hyojeong Kim:

2025 highlights:

  • NomadHer reached 400,000 members
  • Google featured NomadHer’s story as a documentary
  • We successfully hosted our Female Globetrotter Festival in Paris in 2025.

2026 priorities:

  • Improving the NomadHer alogorithm to better match female travelers through the NomadHer app
  • Expanding our B2B partnerships in Seoul, Bali, Tokyo, Bangkok and Paris
  • Planning to host our eighth Female Globetrotter Festival in India

Obvlo

Obvlo is an AI solution for producing and maintaining personalized local content for any destination on earth.

Responses from CEO Callum McPherson:

2025 highlights: In 2025, we’ve become a global company, with clients from the U.S. to the Middle East. We’ve also expanded beyond the hotel vertical, working directly with destinations and tour operators and partnering with Amadeus Nexwave to bring scalable local content to their customers.

2026 priorities: Experiences have historically been seen as an ancillary or upsell opportunity, but that’s changing. Travel companies now recognize that experiences are why travelers take the trip, and hotel rooms and flights are actually the ancillaries. We expect 2026 to bring more enterprise customers who are making “selling the destination” a pillar of their strategy to increase engagement and grow revenue.

TourOptima

TourOptima provides a communication platform for tour operators that reaches guests wherever they are.

Responses from CEO Benjamin Sann:

2025 highlights: It’s been a milestone year for TourOptima, with more than 400% growth and a rapidly expanding team to match. The company’s evolution from a communications platform to a comprehensive operations and marketing ecosystem has been driven by client demand for a larger, unified tech stack. TourOptima now powers messaging, automation, CRM, reviews and AI across some of the world’s top tour operators—helping them bridge the gap between on-trip guest service and long-term customer engagement.

  • 400% year-over-year growth in revenue and team size
  • Launch of the TourOptima AI Suite, moving from beta to full release—delivering guest-level, context-aware responses powered by real conversation data, res-tech integrations and operator policy and training documents
  • New review module that boosts and routes reviews directly to each guests’ respective OTA, when appropriate 
  • Debut of a post-experience CRM and marketing suite tailored for travel operators—enabling lifetime engagement through auto-tagging, segmented campaigns (VIPs, families, five-star guests) and cross-sell workflows
  • New client launches, including Intrepid Travel’s full app and communication suite and Gray Line Worldwide day tour rollouts, alongside continued growth with Crown Tours, City Wonders, Amigo Tours and others

2026 priorities: Looking ahead, TourOptima will focus on deepening its CRM capabilities, empowering clients with more automation and customization and expanding our solution-set for more attractions and landmarks.

  • Expand CRM features including a user-generated content dashboard and advanced post-tour marketing automation
  • Add more self-service controls within the AI suite to personalize and train responses at scale
  • Increase mobile app customization for brand alignment and operator flexibility
  • Continue to support and scale existing partners while entering new segments—particularly attractions, landmarks and experience-based venues.
  • Adding more and deeper restaurant tech and tech partnerships
  • Strengthen TourOptima’s position as the central communications hub connecting operations, marketing and guest experience data in one platform

Tripesa

Tripesa is automating and linking the tourism value chain in Africa by building a payments- first business process management solution specific to the sector.

Responses from managing director David Gonahasa:

2025 highlights:

  • Prasanna Veeraswamy joined Tripesa as CPO
  • Leading fundamental pivot to Roamio, an AI-powered custom travel marketplace that intelligently connects travelers with a curated network of travel service providers
  • Pivot driven by the existence of large datasets of travel providers available on the Tripesa platform and the realization that the African tourism SMEs are more focused on market access. The pivot was also driven by the realization of the general need to drive fulfillment of complex travel on AI.
  • Launching Roamio version one end of November 2025

2026 priorities:

  • Fully launch Roamio across Africa and Asia
  • [Become] the go-to platform for custom multi-day trip planning in Africa with 2,000+ provider network across 50+ countries, 10+ DMO partnerships and [become] a category leader in AI-powered travel marketplace

Trustd.ai

Trustd.ai has developed an innovative and customizable AI platform designed to tackle the trust and safety challenges within the short-term rental (STR) sector. 

Responses from co-founder, CEO and CPO Murat Sonmez:

2025 highlights: 2025 marked a pivotal year for Trustd.ai, as the company successfully transitioned from a pre-revenue startup to a revenue-generating business. After extensive customer feedback and product refinement, Trustd.ai launched its paid service for property managers, delivering a friction-free, seamlessly integrated guest-screening platform that empowers users with greater control, insight and confidence.

The team also expanded its market presence through new PMS integrations and achieved a critical milestone by building a comprehensive database of guest data from past stays collected from publicly available data platforms. This data foundation is essential to advancing Trustd.ai’s proprietary reliability metric, a next-generation benchmark designed to quantify digital trust in the STR ecosystem.

2026 priorities: With real-world data and a validated product-market fit, Trustd.ai is now preparing for its next phase of growth. In 2026, the company will launch its next-generation metric as a measure of trust and reliability across the entire STR industry.  Trustd.ai continues to pioneer the future of digital trust intelligence, redefining how booking platforms, hosts and businesses assess reliability in a highly fragmented STR vertical.

Turpal

Turpal enables travel companies to offer tours, activities and attractions.

Responses from chief business officer Cesar Zurita:

2025 highlights: Achieved triple-digit revenue growth year over year; expanded operations to Turkey and India, bringing our total market presence to five countries; onboarded customers from five new countries; launched AI-powered features including intelligent itinerary optimization, automated pricing recommendations and smart customer communication tools; strengthened our B2B SaaS platform with enhanced API integrations and white-label capabilities; reached 20,000 followers on LinkedIn; selected by 500 Global & Sanabil for one of their startup programs

2026 priorities: Expand sales to four new markets in Asia and Africa; accelerate current growth levels; solidify market leadership in the SMB travel sector through enhanced product offerings and customer success programs; scale into the mid-market segment with enterprise-grade features and dedicated support; continue AI/ML innovation to improve operational efficiency for travel operators

Zatlas

Zatlas is a vertical SaaS platform for hotels, aiming to protect profits and ensure accurate commission payments, so OTA operations run smoothly.

Responses from founder and CEO Adrian Carabias:

2025 highlights:

  • Processed over 800,000 reservations, eliminated fraud in 60,000+ and helped hotels automatically materialize tens of millions of dollars previously left on the table
  • Achieved consistent 30% revenue growth every trimester since launch, closing 2025 with 7x year-over-year growth
  • Launched our AI-driven chargeback dispute engine, boosting win rates by over 500% compared to industry benchmarks

2026 priorities:

  • Expand to the U.S. and Europe to serve global hospitality leaders
  • Grow 5x while maintaining operational efficiency
  • Double revenue per employee by deeply integrating AI across workflows and core operations

Check out additional stories in our “Hot 25 Travel Startups: Where Are They Now” series:



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