Nine travel tech startups have been selected as the winners of the 2025 Global Startup Pitch. The competition—held in person on the Startup Stage at Phocuswright Europe in Barcelona this week—is produced by WiT and Phocuswright to identify breakthrough startups in the travel tech sector.
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The startups were categorized as a “Seedup,” those that were under three years old with under $5 million in funding, or a “Scaleup,” those that were between three and eight years old and under $10 million in funding.
Seeups competed against Seedups, while Scaleups competed against Scaleups across four different regions: Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, North America and Emerging Markets. In line with previous competitions, Phocuswright and WiT also created a Wildcards category.
The Global Startup Pitch Competition is supported by American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), a Phocuswright Strategic Partner of Innovation.
The 2025 Global Startup Pitch Winners
APAC
Europe
North America
Emerging Markets
Wildcards
Next steps
The nine winners will now travel to Singapore for showcase presentations at WiT Singapore from October 6-8.
“It was inspiring to see travel startups from around the world bring to the stage so many timely and relevant solutions poised to make an impact in their home markets and beyond, spanning categories from loyalty to ancillaries, customer service to fraud and computer vision to digital identity,” said Michael Coletta, Phocuswright’s senior manager of research and innovation.
“As expected, AI was on full display—we heard multiple references to Model Context Protocol, showing how much these startups are in tune with building for the future.”
The two from the APAC region will receive a complimentary ASEAN Explorer Pass sponsored by AirAsia MOVE, which covers nine countries, including Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Additionally, Me Protocol was chosen at random for a complimentary consulting strategy session with Travel Again Advisory.
The Global Startup Pitch competition is part of an ongoing commitment by Phocuswright and WiT to cultivate innovation through a platform of events and programs, including WiT Bootcamps, Phocuswright’s Startup Program, PhocusWire’s Hot 25 Travel Startups and Phocuswright’s Launch pitch competition.