25 Best Hotel and Travel Startups

Mews is one of the most exciting and fastest-growing hospitality technology companies in the world right now. Its cloud-native property management system has been described as an operating system for hospitality: it automates the entire guest journey from booking to checkout, bringing PMS, POS, revenue management, housekeeping, and embedded payments into one unified platform. Hotels use Mews to centralise operations while delivering genuinely personalised guest experiences, replacing legacy systems that have held back the industry for years.

What makes Mews particularly compelling in 2026 is its AI-first approach, actively building agentic AI to autonomously manage hotel operations. The company achieved 55% SaaS gross profit growth in 2025 and has made a series of strategic acquisitions including Flexkeeping, Atomize, and DataChat to strengthen its platform. With over $200 million raised and a rapidly growing global footprint, Mews is one to watch very closely.

Lighthouse, which rebranded from OTA Insight in 2023, is a commercial intelligence platform serving over 65,000 hotels across 185 countries. It processes 1.7 billion rates daily to give hoteliers real-time competitive intelligence, demand forecasting, and pricing recommendations. The platform turns what used to be a manually intensive revenue management process into a data-driven, always-on commercial strategy. It was named the number one best guest-experience system by Hotel Tech Report in 2026 and is one of the most widely used hospitality data platforms in the world.

Canary Technologies has built one of the most comprehensive AI-powered guest experience platforms in hospitality, covering digital check-in and check-out, upselling, guest messaging, and tipping. Its AI Voice platform, AI messaging, and AI webchat tools are driving adoption at hotel groups of all sizes. In 2026, AI’s impact on hospitality is being felt most concretely in platforms like this one: tools that genuinely reduce the friction of the guest journey for both visitors and staff simultaneously. With over $80 million raised and a growing roster of hotel group clients globally, Canary is one of the standout hospitality tech success stories of this decade.

Duetto is hospitality’s dedicated Revenue Strategy Platform, delivering software-as-a-service to hotels and casinos that leverages dynamic data sources and real-time insights to inform pricing and demand strategy across the entire enterprise. The platform enables hoteliers to move from static rate setting to truly dynamic, data-informed revenue management. Duetto has built a loyal following among both independent luxury properties and large hotel groups who value the depth of its analytical capability and the quality of its revenue management expertise baked into the product.

Revinate is a direct booking platform that leads the hospitality industry in helping hotels drive direct revenue and reduce dependence on OTAs. Its AI-powered customer data platform collects, unifies, and synthesises guest data into Rich Guest Profiles, giving hotels critical intelligence on guest lifetime spend, stay preferences, and ancillary revenue potential. Revinate’s omnichannel communication platform powers over 950 million guest profiles across 12,500 hotels and has driven over $17.2 billion in direct revenue. For any hotelier serious about owning their guest relationship rather than renting it from a third party, Revinate is a genuinely important platform to understand.

As mobile apps gain more and more traction as a core feature in hospitality businesses, HotelCloud has been a pioneer in this space. The startup designs and develops individually branded apps for the hotel and travel industry, and it has become a well-regarded name in hotel management software. Their custom apps and hotel information systems are built to suit properties of all sizes, improving both the guest experience and back-of-house efficiency. With over 45,000 partners in the travel marketplace and a focus on e-concierge functionality, HotelCloud takes the in-stay guest experience to a genuinely new level.

Hopper is one of the most compelling consumer travel apps in the world right now. It uses sophisticated AI to continuously monitor and analyse flight and hotel pricing data, telling travellers exactly when to book to get the best possible deal and predicting how prices are likely to move in the coming days and weeks. The app has raised over $700 million in funding and has built a genuinely loyal user base among travellers who want data and confidence rather than guesswork when making booking decisions. Hopper also offers price freeze and cancellation protection features that remove the anxiety from forward booking.

Hotel Engine, the Denver-based business travel platform that grew at 300% year-on-year in its first four years after bootstrapping, rebranded as Engine in 2023 as it expanded well beyond hotel booking into a comprehensive business travel management platform. Engine now serves over 600,000 members across more than 40,000 companies, offering discounted lodging across 700,000+ hotels globally, consolidated invoicing, and a genuinely friction-free experience for the business traveller. The platform has raised over $700 million in total funding, a remarkable trajectory that validates the scale of the problem it set out to solve: making business travel more efficient, affordable, and manageable for companies of all sizes.

Bidroom has been called the Amazon Prime of hotel booking, and it is a genuinely interesting model. This well-funded travel startup provides an exclusive booking experience to its premium members, offering better rates than OTAs by cutting out the commission layer that typically sits between the hotel and the guest. Hotels benefit from direct bookings with zero commission paid to the platform; guests benefit from lower prices and a curated selection. The future potential for a commission-free model like Bidroom is genuinely significant given the OTA dependency that continues to weigh on hotel margins globally.

Started by Digvijay Pratap and Geet Bhalla in Dubai in 2013, Holidayme has evolved from a customised travel solution into a niche travel expert for the Middle East. With 8,000 or more hotels and hundreds of activities to choose from, travellers can experience the region in genuine depth. The Traveazy Group, which owns Holidayme, has raised $36 million and continues to use technology in increasingly effective ways to offer better personalisation and a richer travel experience. We loved the concept from the start, and the growth it has experienced since then confirms that the market agreed.

TravelPerk has become one of the most prominent business travel management platforms in the world, consistently featuring on PhocusWire’s Hot 25 Travel Startups lists and growing at an impressive clip. The Barcelona-based company offers an all-in-one platform for booking, managing, and reporting on business travel, combining a consumer-grade user experience with the controls and reporting that corporate travel managers need. It has raised over $400 million and is widely regarded as one of the leading challengers to the established corporate travel management incumbents. For the growing number of freelance and remote hospitality professionals managing their own travel, TravelPerk’s flexible booking options are equally useful.

ResortPass is a brilliant idea executed well: it allows non-guests to book day access to hotel pools, spas, beach clubs, and other amenities by the hour or day, turning underutilised hotel facilities into an additional revenue stream for properties and a new type of leisure experience for consumers. With over $35 million raised and partnerships with hundreds of hotels across the US and beyond, ResortPass has carved out a genuinely new category in hospitality. It is the kind of creative innovation that makes you wonder why it took so long to arrive.

Among the most practical and genuinely useful travel startups to emerge from San Francisco, HotelsByDay addresses a real and persistent frustration: it has always been hard to book a hotel room during odd hours, whether for a few hours of rest during a layover, a meeting, or a midday break. HotelsByDay solves this by enabling guests and hotels to transact in flexible, daytime-specific booking windows that work for both parties. For hotels, it fills rooms during low-occupancy periods. For travellers, it unlocks access to hotel facilities at times when they genuinely need them. Clean, useful, and ahead of its time when it launched.

Collective Retreats is an excellent startup from Denver, Colorado, and one of the most genuinely distinctive luxury travel concepts in recent years. With over $40 million raised in funding rounds, its focus is on creating an unparalleled experience by selecting off-beat, spectacular locations with a deep commitment to experiential travel. Think luxury tented camps with panoramic views of iconic landscapes rather than conventional hotel rooms. Collective Retreats occupies a category of its own in the accommodation market and reflects exactly the kind of traveller demand for authenticity and connection that is reshaping the luxury travel segment.

Blueground operates a global network of designer-furnished apartments available for stays of one month or longer, targeting business travellers, relocating professionals, and the growing population of digital nomads and remote workers who need more than a hotel room but less than a long-term lease. The platform provides a seamless, fully digital experience for finding, booking, and managing move-in-ready homes across major cities in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Blueground sits at a particularly interesting intersection of hospitality, real estate, and the future of work, and its growth trajectory reflects the structural shift toward flexible, location-independent living that accelerated dramatically after the pandemic.

Hosco has been taking big strides in the hospitality recruitment market ever since its inception in 2011, and its growth mode in 2026 remains impressive. This is one of the hottest and most relevant hospitality recruitment startups for anyone reading this who is building a career in the industry. With a database of over 2 million hospitality professionals, 6,000 hotel employers in its network, and partnerships with over 600 hospitality schools globally, Hosco has built the most comprehensive hospitality talent ecosystem available. Based in Europe, primarily Switzerland and Spain, it is expanding steadily across Asia and other global markets.

Zomato started as a feedback website for restaurants and grew to become one of the most exciting food-tech companies in the world. The amount it raised in 2018 was a remarkable $200 million, and its total funding across multiple rounds exceeded $400 million. It went public on the NSE in 2021, but we retain it here to showcase what successful hospitality startups can become when the idea is sound and the execution is persistent. Zomato has since expanded into quick commerce and dining discovery far beyond its original review platform roots, competing with global giants in the food delivery space and building a consumer base that numbers in the hundreds of millions across India and beyond.

AvantStay is a technology-based rental platform built specifically for group travellers: families, friends, and corporate groups who want a managed, curated property experience rather than an Airbnb-style self-service rental. The startup raised $20 million in a financing round led by 3L Capital and has since expanded to 250 or more properties, with a notable partnership with Marriott to expand into ten additional US markets. AvantStay is genuinely innovating for the group travel experience, which has historically been underserved by both traditional hotels and the peer-to-peer rental market simultaneously.

SafetyWing is one of the most interesting travel-adjacent startups of the past five years, offering flexible, subscription-based health and travel insurance built specifically for remote workers, digital nomads, and frequent travellers who do not fit neatly into any traditional insurance product. The company has raised over $35 million and featured on PhocusWire’s Hot 25 Travel Startups list. As remote work and the rise of the location-independent professional continue to reshape who travels, how often, and for how long, SafetyWing’s model becomes more relevant, not less, every year.

Airalo is the world’s first eSIM marketplace for travellers, allowing anyone to purchase and activate local data plans for over 200 countries directly from their phone before they even board the flight. For hospitality professionals travelling internationally and for the guests they serve, the ability to have reliable, affordable data connectivity from the moment you land is genuinely transformative. Airalo has featured on PhocusWire’s Hot 25 Travel Startups list and has grown its user base at remarkable speed, reflecting just how fundamental the connectivity problem was for international travellers and how elegantly the eSIM solution addresses it.

Yanolja is South Korea’s largest travel platform and one of Asia’s most impressive hospitality technology success stories. Founded in 2005, it has raised over $1.7 billion including a landmark investment from SoftBank Vision Fund and is one of the most ambitious hospitality tech companies on the planet. The platform covers accommodation discovery and booking, leisure activities, and AI-powered hotel management software that it is now distributing globally through cloud solutions for hotels in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and beyond. Keep a close eye on Yanolja: its combination of consumer reach and B2B hotel tech ambition makes it one of the most consequential players in global hospitality technology.

LVJI is a Chinese-based travel information startup that has raised $19 million in funding and shows consistent promise across the years. The company provides electronic kiosks, audio guides, and apps to help travellers navigate attractions and destinations, particularly in China’s enormous domestic tourism market. Backed by several prominent investors and with a model that addresses a very specific and practical travel pain point, LVJI is worth keeping an eye on as Chinese outbound travel continues its recovery and expansion into global markets.

Navan, which rebranded from TripActions in 2023, is one of the most ambitious and best-funded business travel and expense management platforms in the world. It reimagines corporate travel using AI, machine learning, and a mobile-first experience to automate what were once painfully manual processes for both travellers and finance teams. The platform has raised over $1.4 billion in funding and is publicly listed on Nasdaq, a remarkable journey for a company that set out to solve the problem of corporate travel that felt designed to frustrate rather than serve the people using it. In 2026, Navan is one of the defining forces shaping how companies manage travel and expense globally.