Year: 2025 | 2024 | 2023
While many travel startups are trying to solve travel planning using artificial intelligence (AI), it’s not where investors in the space are placing their bets.
The "travel planning is hard" narrative no longer cuts it as investors look to profitability, AI-native from the get-go and a proven track record. It doesn’t mean those startups won’t survive, some will, but not the 20+ out there vying for attention.
But depth and breadth among travel startups is a must for the industry to challenge incumbents, push the boundaries, pivot and do things differently.
Coverage of the travel startup ecosystem is in PhocusWire’s roots, with the annual Hot 25 Travel Startups article published every November. Since launch in 2018, 200 companies have been recognized through the Hot 25 series, collectively raising
over $3.3 billion according to Phocuswright’s Travel Startups Interactive Database.
Funding is one measure of ecosystem health, but the picture that emerges from 2025 and into 2026 is more complex than a monetary value. Travel tech funding came in at under $5 billion in 2025, a slight decrease from $5.8 billion in 2024.
Going by figures through the first half of 2026, the situation looks a little brighter, with funding reaching $1.7 billion by the end of May, up from $1.1 billion in 2025.
We know from the investor community that there has been a reporting lag in recent years—hotel loyalty startup Journey recently announced the close of a $15 million seed round, but the deal was done in late 2025. In addition, fewer deals are being disclosed
publicly, and there are other dynamics at play such as investors tending towards smaller checks spread over more businesses.
PhocusWire’s quarterly article focused on startup funding and exits provides some indication of where the capital is flowing. There are fewer discernible trends than in previous years except that many rounds are later stage, emphasizing the profitability
and track record metrics investors want to see.
Notable rounds in the past 12 months include WeTravel’s $92 million, Gathern’s $72 million and Peek’s $70 million. Ramp’s $300 million is worth a mention although the company straddles travel and fintech so can fall beyond what is a travel startup
strictly speaking. In the first quarter of 2026, Mews’ $300 million round and Kindred’s $125 million are among the largest this year so far.
Top travel tech investors 2026
To bring more transparency to travel investors' activity, strategies and outlook, PhocusWire first published this list of top investors in 2023. It is based on analysis by Mike Coletta, Phocuswright senior manager of research and innovation, and Stan Pawlow, Phocuswright
data analyst.
As in previous years, our analysis highlights investors that are most active or contributing the most non-debt funding to the ecosystem. Often the specific amounts contributed by each investor in each round are not publicly available so the analysis focuses
on those who invested in at least three travel companies between May 2025 and May 2026 and/or have a specific focus on travel with stated plans to invest more.
"Once again Thayer tops our list, three years running and the only firm to appear in all four editions, a remarkable statement of conviction in travel through every twist of the market," said Coletta. "The shift is in who's now behind them. A corporate venture arm is back among the most active investors in travel tech: In the same year JetBlue sold its venture arm, United Airlines Ventures went the other way, betting on AI across trip planning, voice and operations.
"Peak XV, formerly Sequoia India, is going after the entire travel wallet for Asia's surging demand: connectivity, visas, payments and loyalty. And Antler keeps seeding travel startups at day zero around the world," he added.
Based on the above criteria, the following list surfaces the top travel tech investors and a sample of the companies they invested in during the specified period. Note that most investors participated in, but did not lead, the majority of rounds.
Honorable mentions
Investor insights
PhocusWire reached out to some of the investors on the list to gather perspectives on investment strategy, how it has changed and what they’d like founders to do differently.
Some responses have been edited for brevity.
What is a part of the travel industry that you were bullish on two years ago that you have pulled away from a bit, and why?
Sarah Finegan, associate partner at Antler: Consumer-facing travel discovery apps. Two years ago, the TikTok-ification of travel felt like a genuine unlock, the idea that shoppable, creator-led video could collapse the gap between inspiration and booking was compelling, and we backed Unravel on exactly that thesis. What’s become clear since is that winning consumer attention at scale is brutally expensive and a difficult path to sustainable unit economics.
The smarter play, which Unravel executed well, is the B2B pivot. Rather than competing for consumers directly, Unravel now powers banks, airlines, telcos and insurers to embed creator-driven travel discovery and commerce directly into their own apps, with customers seeing meaningful lifts in engagement and conversion. The underlying thesis around video-driven conversion wasn’t wrong, the go-to-market just needed to follow where the distribution actually lives. We’re now much more interested in the infrastructure layer enabling travel commerce than in consumer apps.
Amir Amidi, managing partner for Plug and Play’s travel and hospitality program: Sustainability is not as top of mind as it used to be, and where people are spending time and energy when it comes to sustainable centric solutions for the
travel industry is in a different place than a few years ago. The commercial model for sustainable solutions and the travel industry hasn’t scaled the way we had hoped, and they haven't created as much value for the end traveler as suppliers.
Chelsea Salamone, VP, Thayer Investment Partners: Short-term rental software category. Post COVID, low barrier to entry environment caused major headwinds for suppliers (hosts). The subsequent economic pressure drove software churn and
downward pressure on price. Tough category for now.
What separates the startups that you are writing checks for versus those you are passing on?
Amidi, Plug and Play: Always the founders. There's so much opportunity in the travel industry, the question is who is going to go after those opportunities. We just invested in Pintours, a startup founded by an ex-Apple engineer and product
manager. It’s going after a very simple segment of the market—tours and experiences. They're digitalizing destination experiences with the use of AI and human capital and scaling faster than any startup that we've invested in in the past. So, it always
comes back to the entrepreneur, because there's no lack of opportunity, but who you're backing matters a lot more than the segment of the travel industry that you're focused on.
Finegan, Antler: We back founders at day zero, so we rarely have the luxury of using product-market fit as a filter. The first thing we interrogate is the right to win: what makes this specific founder the most credible person to solve this problem? That might be years spent inside the industry they’re disrupting, a technical breakthrough others can’t replicate, or a network that gives them access no outsider could manufacture. Generic ambition isn’t enough, we want founders who are almost unreasonably well-positioned for this exact problem.
Inntelo AI, a U.K. Antler portfolio company, is a strong example. Founder Asif Alidina spent over a decade at the intersection of hospitality and technology, leading U.K. go-to-markets for hotel ops platforms like Knowcross and Optii, building an award-winning guest experience product during the pandemic. When he came to us with a vision for an AI-native platform for hotel operations, he wasn’t theorizing about the space, he’d lived the problems, understood the buyer, and already had the relationships. That’s the kind of unfair advantage we back.
Beyond founder credibility, we look for teams already in motion: talking to customers on day one, iterating in weeks not months, treating every early signal as data. The ones we pass on typically have a well-constructed story that simply hasn’t been tested against reality yet.
Salamone, Thayer: At the earliest stages, we're really underwriting the founder more than the product. AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to building, which means the ability to execute, distribute and adapt has become far more important
than the ability to simply create software.
If the market is large and/or expanding fast, and the problem is real, we're looking for founders with exceptional insight, urgency and the ability to pull customers, talent and partners toward them. Products change. Markets evolve. Great founders figure
it out.
What do you wish founders would stop doing in pitches?
Amidi, Plug and Play: Talking about AI. That’s not to say that they shouldn't be focused on utility of AI in their businesses, but it's way overused. There's so much opportunity in the travel industry that not talking about AI is not
going to be perceived in a negative way. In fact, it's a differentiator these days. And, a lot of the startups talking about AI are doing it more for optics than anything else. They're not AI native startups per se.
Salamone, Thayer: Overcomplicating the story. One of the biggest wins in a pitch is making an investor understand what you're building—and why it matters right now—within an elevator pitch. Your audience should be able to quickly grasp
the problem, your wedge and the long-term vision. Some of the best pitches we have come across are simple, direct and intellectually honest. It’s increasingly important to also have a clear message regarding go to market.
What is your outlook for travel startup funding in the next 12 months?
Amidi, Plug and Play: We’re quite optimistic. Even though the overall investment trend year over year has been declining, our goal this year is to take the contrarian view and actually invest up to probably 10 opportunities in the travel
industry. It comes back to finding the right entrepreneurs, and there are certain segments that we're more excited about than others.
Salamone, Thayer: Bullish. AI has created opportunity in every crevice of the industry and in some areas that have yet to be digitized. We believe a lot of the deconstruction happened in 2025, and 2026 and 2027 are all about building (or
rebuilding). While past-months investment dollars may have been concentrated around later-stage deals, we’re now seeing heightened building activity and early evidence of increased interest in earlier-stage deals in every vertical within travel.
Finegan, Antler:
At Antler we’re not a thematic investor, we don’t start with a sector map and work backwards. We start with founders. So our honest outlook is less about which travel verticals will attract capital, and more about what kind of founders will earn it.
What we do believe is that the bar has risen. The frothy “travel is back” narrative has faded, and investors are more discerning. The founders who will win funding in the next 12 months are those who can demonstrate early commercial traction, genuine domain edge and the adaptability to figure things out when the market doesn’t behave as expected.