In Phocus

Perk (formerly TravelPerk) has launched an MCP connector linking Claude, ChatGPT and other AI assistants directly to its travel and spend management platform. Chief product officer Nikita Miller frames it around killing "shadow work," the time employees waste digging through reports and switching tools for basic answers. The connector lets travelers pull trip and expense details, finance teams access invoices, travel m...

Q2 2026 was quiet for travel startup funding but busy for M&A. Only two Series B rounds stood out: hotel tech company Smartness raised €47 million, and India-based hostel operator The Hosteller raised $16 million. WeRoad closed the quarter's lone Series C, $58 million led by Airbnb. Clarasight raised an $11.5 million Series A for product development and geographic expansion. Phocuswright's Travel Startups Interacti...

Revolut's AI travel push, a year after acquiring Swifty, is led by Stanislav Bondarenko, the startup's co-founder, now inside Revolut's lifestyle unit. His goal is unchanged: book flights and hotels from a single voice message.

Speaking with PhocusWire's Linda Fox in the PhocusWire Studio, Bondarenko named the advantages of joining a larger company — stability and access to Revolut's existing user ba...

Zerolook, a Switzerland-based startup that predicts flight prices, has raised US$1.9 million in pre-seed funding led by Playfair, with participation from Vento Ventures, TrueSight Ventures, Alpha Ventures and several angel investors. Its machine learning model predicts flight prices and itineraries, aiming to cut the volume of searches hitting airline systems.

Recent OAG figures show up to 20,000 searches ...

Loveholidays has quietly built one of the fastest-growing positions in European package travel, expanding from a UK-only startup in 2012 into eight markets and roughly 15% of the UK packaged travel market. 

In this conversation, head of strategy Isabella Cheng unpacks the bigger shift behind that growth: dynamic packaging has gone from a niche 2% of the UK market in 2009 to about a quarter of it today...

Less than a year into leading OAG, CEO Filip Filipov sat down with PhocusWire's Linda Fox and the thing that's actually surprised him isn't AI, it's customers.

Preferences are outrunning what technology can deliver, on both consumer and B2B sides. The industry, he says, is chasing customers' dreams of what a product could be rather than what's currently buildable.

AI adoption matched his expec...

Generative AI is transforming how travelers discover and book trips, according to a PhocusWire interview with John Matson, chief revenue officer of Propellic, and Carlo del Mistro, founder of Stiplo.

Del Mistro said hotel owners often contact his company after finding their property missing from ChatGPT results. He likened today's AI visibility landscape to early SEO, when ranking drivers were poorly under...

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how travelers discover and book trips, but a critical question remains unresolved: will AI reinforce the industry's biggest players or tear down their advantages? In this episode, two of travel tech's most vocal commentators bring their ongoing public debate into the studio.

Mario Gavira, chief marketing officer of Travelier, argues that AI is more likely to strengthen ...

Just weeks into his new role as CEO of Despegar, Gonzalo Estebarena is outlining an ambitious vision for the Latin America-based OTA as it enters its next phase under Prosus ownership. Having previously served as Despegar’s CTO and chief commercial officer, Estebarena said the company has maintained its “startup soul” while gaining the scale and resources of a global technology com...

In this episode, the CEOs of CityUnscripted and Context Travel unpack how distribution in tours and activities is evolving as major platforms like Tripadvisor and Airbnb expand their presence. Nick Whitfield of CityUnscripted argues that while the landscape may appear increasingly commoditized, the reality is more nuanced.

Overwhelming choice and sameness across list...

The conversation around sustainability in tourism may feel more advanced than ever, but real change isn’t keeping pace. Jeremy Sampson, CEO of The Travel Foundation, argues that growing consensus on tourism’s environmental and social impact has created a misleading sense of progress. While awareness has increased, the system itself hasn’t evolved quickly enough to match the acceler...

Hotels are actively exploring AI as a strategic investment, with a strong focus on improving guest engagement and operational efficiency. James Bishop of SiteMinder emphasizes that the real opportunity lies in automation, not workforce reduction, but enabling staff to work more productively. Chris Clayton of Scenic Hotel Group reinforces that AI is not a plug-and-play solution, warning against overs...

Multimodal travel is quickly becoming central to how people plan and experience trips, according to Rome2Rio CEO Wendy Olson Killion. Speaking at The Phocuswright Conference, Killion emphasized that multimodal transportation—combining flights, trains, buses and more—is no longer a niche behavior but a core part of travel. This shift is reflected in Rome2Rio’s data, where 50% of sea...

Nishank Gopalkrishnan, six months into his role as CEO of Dreamlines, is focused on understanding both the cruise industry and how the company can stand out in a relatively under-digitized segment of travel. Drawing on experience across startups and major players like TUI and MakeMyTrip, he sees cruises as a fragmented market with significant room for innovation. Despite representing only a small sh...

Travel companies are entering a far more regulated era as governments in Europe and the U.K. expand consumer protections to reflect how travel is now bought and sold. Historically, regulations like the Package Travel Directive focused on bundled trips, but new rules extend coverage to services purchased within a 24-hour window, even if booked separately across a single platform. According to Rhys Gr...

The airline distribution landscape is entering a new phase as New Distribution Capability (NDC) adoption accelerates and the industry moves toward modern offer and order models. In this episode, Jeremy Jameson, VP of the Americas at Mystifly, and Jesus Monzo Faubel, senior director of flights (west) at PKFARE, discuss how improved servicing and post-ticketing functionality are beginning to drive rea...

Migrating to the cloud is transforming how travel companies operate, innovate and serve travelers. In this episode, Tedd Evers, Global Partner Leader of Travel and Hospitality at Amazon Web Services (AWS), explains why cloud adoption is about more than cost savings. While moving away from traditional data centers can reduce expenses and increase operational efficiency, the real advantage lies in th...

Aven Hospitality may be a new name, but CEO Teresa Mackintosh is already deep into the company’s next chapter.

Following its 2025 acquisition by TPG and separation from former owner Sabre, Mackintosh has spent the past six months preparing Aven to stand on its own. In this episode, she shares how the company is shifting from long-term strategic planning to ...

Travel selling is evolving fast and new players are redefining how trips are discovered and booked.

This episode features Jake Peters, co-founder and chief product and technology officer at Fora, and Maarten van Pijpen, chief growth officer at Unravel, in conversation with PhocusWire senior reporter Morgan Hines. The discussion explores how AI, social media and c...