This inaugural award, launched by VC firms F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads, highlights the most innovative and successful companies in the travel tech industry.
The Travel Tech Titans Awards honors the game-changing startups and scale-ups that are redefining the future of travel and hospitality. A panel of judges including tech investors, industry executives, and experienced founders, selected 18 winners out of nearly 200 nominations.
Collectively, the nomination pool represents 21 countries with more than 12,000 employees; from bootstrapped to pre-IPO, they have raised $6.9 billion. 70% of the nominated companies are focused on infrastructure and data, addressing the longstanding issue of underinvestment in the travel sector.
“Global enthusiasm for travel post-pandemic has been a double-edged sword. While proving once again the resilience of the travel industry through major crises historically, it has also exposed many of the challenges that surfaced after years of delaying investment in technology and customer experience,” said Gaurav Tuli, Partner at F-Prime Capital. “As investors in the travel tech category, we have seen the incredible innovation and impact startups can have and wanted to shine a spotlight on these disruptors.”
“The travel and tourism sector presents a very meaningful part of our economies, more than 10% of the global GDP before the pandemic. It’s been a relief to see the recovery of the sector post covid with full occupancy rates in hotels and airports. However, this industry is now facing new challenges that are equally worrying: staff shortages, transition to carbon neutral, GenZ ways of purchasing travel, big tech trying to enter the travel distribution game. We believe startups are uniquely able to help solve these challenges,” said Lucile Cornet, Partner at Eight Roads.
Together, the 18 Travel Tech Titans represent the full spectrum of the travel tech industry, from back-end infrastructure and industry tools to tours, accommodation, and transportation.
Early Stage Winners (0-$10M in funding)
- BTP Automation
- Deal Engine
- Grapevine
- NeoKe
- NLX
- Thrust Carbon
Mid Stage Winners ($10-$50M in funding)
- Amenitiz
- Canary Technologies
- Fora
- Point.me
- Sensible Weather
- Sherpa
Late Stage Winners ($50M+ in funding)
- Cloudbeds
- Hopper
- Mews
- OTA Insight
- Selfbook
- TravelPerk
The judges bring a global and diverse set of experiences: they are executives at travel enterprise giants, entrepreneurs and experienced investors in the travel tech sector. With their expertise, this list helps shine a light on the great work being done in travel tech and identify the future pillars of this industry. Judges include:
- Gilad Berenstein, Brook Bay Capital
- Caroline Bremner, Euromonitor
- Suzanna Chiu, Amadeus IT Group
- Kristi Choi, Plug and Play Ventures
- Lucile Cornet, Eight Roads Ventures
- Will Cunningham, WestCap
- Stuart Greif, Forbes Travel Guide
- Chris Hemmeter, Thayer Ventures
- Kurien Jacob, Highgate Ventures
- Ellen Keszler, Board member & advisor at multiple companies
- Simon Lehmann, AJL Atelier
- Keyvan Nilforoushan, Virgil, ex-One Fine Stay
- Mauricio Prieto, Travel Tech Essentialist
- Tript Singh Lamba, Expedia Group
- Colin Smyth, Flywire
- Jean-Christoph Taunay, TravelPerk
- Gaurav Tuli, F-Prime Capital
- Cara Whitehill, Unlock Advisors
Nominations were provided by the judges and the general public. Each judge then distributed five votes among startups in each stage; judges were limited in their ability to vote for companies in their own portfolios.
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