It has been four years since PhocusWire named its Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2022.
As we prepare to announce our class of 2026, we are once again checking in with some of our standout alumni of Hot 25 Travel Startups from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Many of the class of 2022 have grown and undergone changes. There have been a number of acquisitions such as Kambr, which was acquired by Amadeus, and TapTrip, which was snapped up by TripStax, another Hot 25 Travel Startup.
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Others, including Frontdesk and Cabana, sadly have gone by the wayside. Short-term rental management company Frontdesk laid off its staff in early 2024 after failing to secure funding. Cabana, meanwhile, announced early last year that it was suspending operations.
Meanwhile, Onfly has expanded internationally and secured major funding while others are working out how best to integrate artificial intelligence and tackle the challenges of global expansion.
Some responses have been edited for brevity.
Onfly
Onfly offers an "all-in-one" solution that combines travel management (air, hotel, bus, and cars), expenses and a corporate card in a single digital platform.
Co-founder and CEO Marcelo Linhares:
We grew 85% year-over-year in revenue, achieved 2.7k companies as customers and raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Tidemark.
- The biggest challenge I’m dealing with currently is:
Continuing to scale the company while preserving Onfly’s culture. We are already 700 employees and continue to attract new talent. We understand that we are still at the beginning of the journey, and we need great people for our medium- and long-term challenges. Expansion into Mexico is also a major challenge. We launched operations in March this year and already have approximately 50 clients.
- My view on startup funding:
Tourism is a massive market, with more than $1 trillion in addressable market size, offering many opportunities for disruption across different verticals.
I believe there will always be sufficient capital for strong investment theses. Personally, I see very promising opportunities in B2B and in hotel distribution.
- The technologies or innovations that excite me the most are:
We are making significant progress on the inventory side, verticalizing all distribution. We were the first to connect with LATAM’s New Distribution Capability content, and we are currently integrating with Volaris (NDC also).
Today, we have an in-house “Travel as a Service” platform, with more than 35 connections to partners across airlines, hotels, car rentals and buses.
We are embedding the entire post-sales air travel journey directly into the "Onfly mobile app,” so cancellations, rescheduling and credit usage will soon be fully managed without any human interaction. This ties directly into our purpose of simplifying the corporate traveler’s journey.
In AI, we are also making strong progress with autonomous agents to automate part of our customer service. We are very optimistic, and the results are already promising.
Road.Travel
Road.Travel curates itineraries with the best activities, pitstops, hotels and eateries along the way.
Co-founder and COO Kirill Khomko:
We’re now live in 40+ car models with our Android Automotive in-vehicle app. The app is pre-installed in select Ford and Lincoln vehicles in the U.S. It is available in all three major in-car app stores (Google Play, Harman Ignite and Appning by Forvia). We continue to refine product user experience and data to surface the nuances of our interactive curated roads and spots right where it matters: in your dashboard.
We also delivered a strong brand media campaign for Visit California together with Frommer’s, and we’re open to new partnerships with Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) to power road travel, destination-tailored ads at scale.
What’s next: Exploration Mode! An in-car experience that spots interesting places nearby and tells their stories as you drive, using voice prompts and geolocation triggers. This direction aligns with the broader industry shift toward voice-guided, location-aware touring, where commentary plays automatically based on where you are and where you’re headed. Additionally, as in-car voice assistants rapidly scale, we’re well positioned to meet drivers’ expectations for hands-free discovery and smarter guidance.
- The biggest challenge I’m dealing with currently is:
Identifying and partnering with the right DMOs to showcase and promote road travel journeys, while seamlessly integrating in-car experiences, voice-powered guidance and discovery and digital touch points that enhance the traveler’s journey and enrich their experience at each destination while helping DMOs achieve their goals and KPIs.
- My view on startup funding:
We haven't been involved in the topic since 2022, but we plan to raise another round soon, so we'll be exploring the world of startup funding once again.
- The technologies or innovations that excite me the most are:
One of the most exciting areas of tech innovation for us is the intersection of AI, travel and storytelling. We are building a tool that uses AI to analyze video content stored in GoPro Cloud, extracting the most meaningful highlights—from time-lapse sequences of hikes to special moments and scenic views, even transcribing spoken commentary directly from the footage.
This creates a rich, interactive content layer on a map, where journeys can be revisited, shared and reimagined. Think of it as “reverse planning”: Instead of planning a trip in advance, travelers can be inspired by the best captured moments of others and then plan their own adventures backwards from those highlights.
This flips the traditional approach to travel planning and makes discovery more organic and personalized. Looking ahead, we see enormous promise in bringing these innovations directly into the car. Imagine an AI travel companion that not only suggests routes but also curates immersive, voice-guided road trip experiences, highlighting hidden gems along the way. Integrated AI “travel agents” inside vehicles could transform road journeys by blending navigation, storytelling and discovery into a seamless in-car experience. Cars, roads, creators, explorers—all connected by AI, making travel both smarter and more inspiring.
RoomPriceGenie
RoomPriceGenie is a revenue management solution intended specifically for smaller hotels.
Co-founder Ari Andricopoulos:
It has been an amazing year of very fast growth so far while still maintaining the awesome company culture.
- The biggest challenge I’m dealing with currently is:
The move towards AI in the product is both a big challenge and an even bigger opportunity.
- My view on startup funding:
We raised a lot of money at the end of last year—I can't comment on how it is this year.
- The technologies or innovations that excites me the most are:
For me, automation is such a key to running a successful business, and the new possibilities that LLMs bring give a whole new wave of innovation throughout the company. This atmosphere is really an exciting one to be in.
Thrust Carbon
Thrust Carbon helps drive emissions reductions and long-term cost savings for business travel programs.
Founders' associate Josh Loyd:
We've had a great year. We’ve really upscaled the functionality of our key products, with four major releases in the first six months of the year:
- Compliance suite: helps enterprises ensure they are climate compliant, effortlessly pass their assurance processes, and save assurance costs in the process.
- Data visualization: provides a deep dive into enterprise travel emissions data, and finds huge potential emissions savings—such as carrier switch & air-to-rail switch on realistic routes.
- NetZero forecaster: enables enterprises to model different emissions scenarios and to visualize their path to net-zero – get ahead of future SAF and carbon removal costs.
- TripsAI: instantly calculate journey emissions and receive recommendations just by forwarding an email.
As a result of these releases, we’re now the only carbon intelligence product in the business travel market that can help enterprises prepare for the incoming regulations, build carbon forecasts that are live linked to historic emissions data and find huge emissions reductions within their data.
- The biggest challenge I’m dealing with currently is:
The ‘why’ behind sustainability has moved since 2019 when we first started out—perhaps to give it defensibility against other business goals. Net zero regulations have faced rollbacks; cost savings are front and center. Whilst this has been a challenge for Thrust Carbon, we realize we are perfectly placed to seize this opportunity. Despite popular belief, sustainable choices are often the cheapest, and we are well positioned in the industry to roll out cost and carbon savings to the $100 billion+ annual travel spend that touches our data.
- My view on startup funding:
Startup funding has been in flux over the past few years as there hasn’t been much appetite for the riskier investments. But from what startup funding we have seen, there has been a definite shift towards AI being a key driver. It is THE buzzword at the moment, just like sustainability was a few years ago. The speed at which products are moving these days is astounding, and the funding landscape has to move just as quickly to keep pace.
- The technologies or innovations that excite me the most are:
Obviously, AI is a super exciting new technology. But, to be more specific, the way that it can be used specifically within travel is fascinating.
We experimented with AI earlier this year (and definitely are by no means finished with it) after creating our TripsAI feature. We’re excited to continue to see how it AI evolves within travel over the next few years, and how it could transition from something we prompt, to something that prompts us.
Wheel the World
Wheel the World empowers millions of people with disabilities to explore the world confidently, while helping the travel industry unlock the full potential of inclusive tourism.
Co-founder and COO Camilo Navarro:
Consistent 2x year-over-year growth across all metrics, revenues, partners verified, travelers; 80% NPS from our clients.
- The biggest challenge I’m dealing with currently is:
As we are enjoying a great product market fit in the U.S., we are currently looking to expand our product to Europe. It has been challenging to navigate DMOs over there.
- My view on startup funding:
We are currently raising a round of funding, which is looking promising. We have already committed half of the round. We've noticed the appetite from investors to invest in companies who have incorporated AI, which we have, so we've experienced positive feedback.
- The technologies or innovations that excites me the most are:
We are releasing the first AI accessibility travel advisors, which uses our proprietary small language model SLM. This will allow users to get reliable and specific accessibility information when looking to travel. On the other hand, we are creating an MCP AI API that will allow our data and knowledge to be distributed multi-platform (our data layer).
An ongoing look at successes and failures
As we catch up with a selection of our other Hot Travel Startups since 2021 over the coming weeks, we will continue to note their recent milestones including funding successes, mergers and acquisition activity and who hasn't made it.