Booking a football dream 

HomeToGo became Union Berlin’s main sponsor in February. Now, they’ve done something better: turned the stadium into a vacation rental, but for 2 nights only.

In early May, a few lucky fans will sleep inside the stadium. Right in the stands. With a Union-themed setup, a private tour, and tickets to the match the next day. The stays are being offered directly through HomeToGo’s platform, with a dedicated listing.

💬“We’re proud to give something exceptional back to this dedicated community,” said HomeToGo CEO Patrick Andrae. “And this is just the kickoff. Football fans and travelers with a taste for the extraordinary should stay tuned.”

A lot of brands talk about creating experiences, but only a few actually make them feel as personal as this. And behind the scenes, maybe there is a bigger play on the way.

Fintech loves travel

While everyone’s busy talking about AI, fintech updates probably slipped under the radar. Easy to miss. But there’s a pattern: quietly improving the foundations, the stuff that actually keeps the industry running.

- Mews launched multi-currency payments, helping hotels handle cross-border transactions, and keep a cut of the exchange.

- HBX Group rolled out a new eWallet together with FinPay, built to streamline B2B payments across its hotel and distribution ecosystem.

- Turkish Airlines quietly became a licensed payments provider, with TKPay now regulated by the Central Bank of Türkiye.

As you can see, none of these updates are flashy. But they change things behind the scenes, the plumbing, the foundations. Can we say payments are becoming strategic ground?

These changes show where things are moving. Payments matter here, and more travel brands are quietly building smart systems to stay ahead.

So yes, fintech is starting to feel like part of the product.

Closing hotel data gaps

London-based Lighthouse bought The Hotels Network. This is huge for hospitality tech.

Lighthouse has been building a full commercial platform for hotels: pricing, benchmarking, market intel. But one piece was still missing: how to turn that data into direct bookings.

That’s where The Hotels Network comes in. And this acquisition connects the dots.

💬 “This closes a critical gap,” Lighthouse CEO Sean Fitzpatrick said. “Revenue teams and marketing teams have been working in silos for too long. We’re fixing that.”

THN brings the personalization layer, the tools that tailor hotel websites based on real guest behavior.

💬 “We’ve always believed that personalization without data is just guessing,” said Juanjo Rodriguez, THN’s founder. “Now we can connect pricing, marketing, and distribution. All in one place, with one system.”

Too many tools and disconnected systems slow everything down. The real shift is in building smarter setups, that are faster, leaner, and actually connected.

Lyft takes Europe's streets

Lyft is buying FreeNow for €175 million, taking the platform off the hands of BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The company will keep its base in Germany, but it’s no longer European-owned.

FreeNow runs in over 150 cities and quietly hit break-even last year. Most of its business comes from taxis, not ride-hailing.

And that’s the angle. Nearly half of Europe’s taxi rides still happen offline. Lyft sees a chance to grow by digitizing what’s already there instead of replacing it, but the services are not expected to change much.

💬 “We’re not here to replace local players,” said CEO Thomas Zimmermann. “we stand with the industry - not above it.”

Bringing natural language to bookings

They say booking business travel can take too long, but Italy-based BizAway wants to fix that.

They’ve just acquired Aervio, a Barcelona-based startup that uses AI to automate the whole process (from searching flights to sending the invoice) through natural language processing (NLP).

BizAway is smarting-up their platform and this deal is their bet that speed and automation will set who stays relevant.

Built-in climate tools

The Copenhagen-based travel platform Goodwings just raised $2.9 million to keep growing its climate-first model for corporate travel.

The idea is straightforward: business trips still happen. The emissions are tracked. The carbon gets removed. All inside the booking flow.

While some travel companies are still figuring out where sustainability fits, Goodwings has picked their lane: make it part of the workflow, or it won’t happen.

Instead of selling sustainability, they’re making it automatic, built into flows that already exist.

Travel goes South

Brazil-based Onfly just raised $40 million to keep building its travel and expense platform. Flights, hotels, buses, cars, short-term rentals, all in one place. Most of their customers already use the integrated corporate card, which has handled $35 million in payments over the past two years.

They’re expanding into Mexico next and putting the money into product and sales.

As Skift points out, this is the second business travel startup in the last three weeks raising money for Latin America. That says a lot. The market’s big, but still full of clunky systems that haven’t kept up. Take it from a Brazilian.

Hosting, minus hassle

HostAI started with guest messaging. Now they’re rebranding as Conduit, and raising $3.1 million to go beyond that.

The goal is to take the repetitive, daily work short-term rental hosts deal with and automate it through one system. Instead of a dashboard full of features, this is just one AI layer, built into the workflow.

It’s a common thing in SaaS: start focused, then expand. But when it comes to STR solutions, there’s still plenty of space for a tool that just works.