Looking back on 2025, several themes stand out from the travel technology crowd, reshaping the industry landscape and setting the tone for 2026.
Artificial intelligence (AI) advancements, particularly with generative and agentic forms, continued to dominate the news cycle—with no signs of slowing. Mergers and acquisitions, and ongoing changes in payments, digital identity and airline retailing also remained in focus.
PhocusWire narrowed down the list of the top newsmakers for 2025, spotlighting the companies and individuals behind the most significant moves. Keep reading for the top five headline-makers.
Experiences
Phocuswright analysts predicted that experiences would be a central theme in travel in 2025—and the industry has proven them right.
A report published by Arival earlier this year found that experiences were top of mind for travelers, with 65% of respondents stating that experiences play “a significant role in their decision on where to go.”
Experiences-focused platforms made moves in 2025, including Berlin-based GetYourGuide, which entered the shows and events space and launched features such as AI-powered review management.
Additionally, major players introduced new tours and activities-focused verticals, with MakeMyTrip adding a global tours and activities platform for Indian travelers and Airbnb adding services and relaunching experiences.
While Airbnb’s move elicited criticism in the short-term rental community, the company reported early success and later confirmed that in Q3, nearly half of experiences bookings were not connected to Airbnb accommodations bookings.
Early in the year, Tripadvisor announced a partnership with Perplexity—which saw the integration of more than 300,000 experiences from its Viator brand—and predicted that its experiences category would be its largest revenue driver in 2025. In November, the company said it would pivot from reviews to in-destination experiences and merge Brand Tripadvisor's experiences team with Viator, cutting about 20% of its workforce in the process.
As interest intensified in tours and activities, investors took action. Major rounds included $25 million for Exoticca in February, $92 million for WeTravel in September and $70 million for Peek in November.
Klook secured $100 million in Q1, confirming in November that it is moving toward an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S.
To round out the year, Expedia Group made a significant play by announcing plans to acquire Amsterdam-based Tiqets for an undisclosed sum. Moving forward, Douglas Quinby, co-founder and CEO of Arival, anticipates that the tours and activities sector—which is defined by fragmentation—will be ripe for strategic investors looking to acquire “well-run operators, scale operations and transform the landscape.”
AI growth
AI was a newsmaker for the third year running, and that trend is likely to continue as adoption becomes mainstream. According to Phocuswright research published in November, almost 40% of U.S. travelers now use generative AI tools for trip planning, up from 28% during the same period last year.
Across the industry—from marketing and search, hotels, payments, aviation and metasearch—stakeholders are considering how this technology will impact travel’s future.
Digital travel giants such as Expedia and Booking.com turned heads with different initiatives, including Expedia’s AI trip matching feature and its partnership with Perplexity. Booking also revealed how it's using AI to learn more about traveler intent. In a major headline in October, it was announced that both OTAs were among initial partners to launch apps in ChatGPT.
Perplexity also linked with SelfBook and Tripadvisor on hotel booking, and OpenAI included Tripadvisor, Priceline, Booking.com and Uber as travel partners for the launch of Operator.
Also this year, the industry has been preparing for agentic commerce with the rise of agentic AI. Sabre, for example, launched APIs to enable agentic solutions, and Google announced it will offer agentic travel booking with hotels and flights offered in AI Mode. Amex GBT has promised an upgraded Egencia with agentic search in the new year as well.
What will be needed for agentic success, such as clean data, has been widely discussed, as has Model Context Protocol's (MCP) potential to transform the industry.
Major AI providers have voiced their support for the standard announced by Anthropic, with travel companies like Apaleo, TourRadar, Expedia and Kiwi.com already taking steps to integrate MCP.
Autonomous flights, vehicles
“Autonomous” was a buzzword in the travel sector this year, particularly with robotaxis and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL).
While there was initial investor excitement surrounding eVTOL, that was tempered in early 2025 amid Lilium's bankruptcy filing in late 2024, Volocopter’s fall into insolvency and consolidation in the industry.
U.S.-based Joby Aviation, however, was a bright spot. In March, the electric air taxi specialist partnered with Virgin Atlantic to launch service in the U.K., and a month after acquiring Blade Air Mobility’s passenger business in August, it teamed up with Uber Technology to bring Blade’s services to the Uber app. Yet another partnership was announced in October, this time with Ras Al Khaimah Transport Authority and Skyports Infrastructure.
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) were also pegged as “revenue-generating deployments” in the first AI Trends Report from Mary Meeker since 2019—and there was certainly momentum in the sector.
In May, Uber stated that it would be bringing more robotaxis to its platform, securing partnerships throughout the year with Pony.ai, May Mobility, Momenta, Baidu, as well as Nuro and Lucid.
Uber also expanded an existing partnership with WeRide to bring thousands more robotaxis to the Uber platform in the U.S. In October, the duo launched robotaxi passenger rides in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Uber rival Lyft expanded in the autonomous space as well, partnering with Baidu, while Singapore-based Grab invested $60 million in remote driving tech company Vay and partnered with May Mobility.
Other movers and shakers included AV company Wayve, which acquired software development company Quality Match this month, and Zoox, which became the official robotaxi partner of Resorts World Las Vegas.
Vacation rental shifts
News headlines in 2025 around the vacation rental segment have been centered predominantly on consolidation.
But to look at what has happened this year, a glance back is necessary at 2021 and 2022 when a spate of companies went public via special purchase acquisition company. At the time, some questioned the valuations the companies attracted as shares tumbled and investors pulled back.
Companies such as Sonder and Vacasa used the vehicle to go public and have been the subject of many headlines this year. News of a bid for Vacasa by smaller company Casago dominated the first few months of 2025. After much back and forth with a rival bid, the dust finally settled on the deal in March.
Simultaneously, more details emerged regarding the Sonder-Marriott licensing deal, initiated in August 2024, seeing 9,000 Sonder properties join the Marriott International portfolio.
Come the end of June, Sonder co-founder Francis Davidson announced it was time for him to leave the business, and it seemed like a done deal. Then, on November 9, Marriott announced that the agreement had been terminated because of a default on Sonder’s part. Sonder then said it had no choice but to wind down operations.
Further vacation rental consolidation news throughout the year included HomeToGo’s acquisition of Interhome, which also rumbled on a little longer than perhaps anticipated.
Besides the acquisitions in the space, vacation rental startups and scaleups continued to attract funding. Noteworthy rounds went into Arbio with $36 million, Gathern with $72 million, $40 million for Kasa and €46 million for Holidu.
In unsurprising news, each funding announcement included a statement about AI plans and developments. As the vacation rental segment continues to mature, AI is seen as a tool to drive professionalization as well as efficiency.
Corporate travel consolidation
American Express Business Travel’s $540 million acquisition of CWT took almost a year and a half to complete but was finalized in September. Before finally getting the greenlight, the merger came under scrutiny by the U.K. competition authority and was also the subject of an antitrust suit by the U.S. Department of Justice.
This was the biggest deal the corporate travel market had seen in 2025, as well as for some years before that. In fact, the last major deal was Amex Global Business Travel’s (Amex GBT) acquisition of Egencia from Expedia Group in 2021.
A question hangs over what happens next, with a recent article from Bloomberg reporting GBT may now be exploring a sale. Speculation on LinkedIn moots a number of possible scenarios, including an acquisition by Concur, which has a strategic deal with GBT to create a platform for booking, servicing and expense management.
The merger with CWT was not the only M&A activity in corporate travel. Smaller acquisitions took place beginning with TravelPerk’s (recently rebranded Perk) acquisition of expense management specialist Yokoy announced in January. Australia-based Webjet unveiled plans recently to create a business travel arm scooped up corporate travel tech firm Locomote for $11 million. Direct Travel, acquired by Steve Singh and a group of investors in 2024, also announced its acquisition of ATPI.
Further consolidation is very likely, particularly as AI begins to push into some of the areas that humans would previously have occupied.
Further headline grabbers in corporate travel in 2025 include Navan’s much anticipated IPO, which finally took place in late October. The U.S.-based company (previously called TripActions) made a string of acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe in recent years and has raised more than $660 million since launch in 2015.
Sticking with funding, corporate travel startups continued to attract investor attention in the past year. Perk kicked off the year with a $200 million round, Ramp recently announced a $300 million round and blockchain tech specialist Blockskye, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup for 2024, raised almost $16 million.