FutureTravel Newsletter 29 / August 12

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Hi , 

Here is your weekly roundup of the top travel innovation, trends and startups news: - In March Hopin announced a $400 million investment round. Now the event management platform has raised an extra $450 million. With this money, the company has been on acquisition-spree and now plans to use the funds to accelerate their growth. Now... that’s fast. I mean, they were founded in 2019! Awesome! 

- In order to help hotels, resorts and vacation rental managers to improve how they interact with their guests, SendSquared has raised $1 million. The US-based startup will use the funds to further grow their marketing communications platform for hotels and resorts.  

- It can be overwhelming to try to keep up with all the COVID-19 info out there, right? I feel you. I bumped into this amazing dashboard created by Information is Beautiful and thought it deserved it’s own space here on the newsletter. Take it as a (beautiful) reminder of everything we’ve already been through since the beginning of the pandemic. 

- Casai, a Mexico City-based startup which manages short-term rentals mainly for leisure travelers, is now expanding into serviced apartments for corporate travelers. By announcing the acquisition of the Brazilian operations of Q Apartments, they strengthen the goal to make Brazil their biggest market until the end of the year. 

- With the mission to revolutionise the travel industry for people with disabilities, Wheel the World has raised $2 million in its seed round. Through their platform, the startup makes it easier for travelers with disabilities to book places to stay and things to do. The company will also work with hotels and tours to attract this new segment of travelers and how to work with people who have disabilities.- Slovakian-based NextRetreat is launching the first “all-in-one” solution for organising team travel. Where many platform work with a traveler in mind, NextRetreat was designed exclusively for teams. In times of so many people working from home, traveling with the team is definitely a hot topic right now.- You might have heard about a report that was released in the last days about global warming happening faster than we all thought. Here is an opinion piece from Kit Brennan (founder of Thrust Carbon) on what this might mean for the travel industry. Is your company taking action about it, ? I’d love to hear more about it. 

- Short-term rental company Frontdesk has raised $7 million and sets up to “fuel-the-fire and emerge from the pandemic as leaders in the booming short-term rental space”, as Kyle Weatherly (CEO) announced. 

This is it for this week, . See you next Thursday, Ana