Travel Tech Connect 2025 🎤

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner

This is a busy time for service and support teams and a perfect moment to offer great service and exceed expectations.

With Trengo, you can show customers at every peak season moment (summer holidays, winter breaks, next Valentine's) how good you are and enjoy repeat business for many years to come.

The trust factor

A study by TUI shows that most people can’t tell if a travel image is real or made by AI. This could make people trust travel photos less, especially older travelers and women. Younger travelers and men don’t seem as bothered.

AI images get attention, but they don’t necessarily lead to more bookings. As for TUI, they say they won’t use AI for destination photos and will keep things clear when AI is involved.

Exotic escapes

With €25M in fresh funding, Exoticca is expanding globally, with North America as a key focus, where it already sees strong demand. Beyond growth, they are investing heavily in AI to rethink how people book complex, multi-stop trips.

Exoticca is using AI to make long-haul travel more simple. This means helping travelers get better deals, plan trips with less effort, and book experiences that fit their needs.

Travel Tech Connect 2025

While Barcelona fills up for MWC/4YFN, we’ll be doing what we do best: gathering great travel people in one place. For the third time, we’re co-hosting Travel Tech Connect: an evening of networking, open mic pitches, and (hopefully) drinks.

If you’re in town on March 6th, come join us! I’d love to see you there.

You can use FUTURETRAVEL for a free ticket. 💛

The vacation rentals remix

Well, that escalated quickly. HomeToGo is buying Interhome for up to €250M. With this, it’s not just a leading vacation rental platform, it’s the leading platform.

This is their biggest acquisition yet and is expected to boost HomeToGo’s revenue and cash flow. Interhome, which manages around 40,000 holiday homes across more than 20 countries, will become part of HomeToGo_PRO, its software and service platform. 

Meanwhile, Migros is selling the rest of Hotelplan Group (excluding Interhome) to Dertour. This deal expands Dertour’s tour operator and travel distribution business in Switzerland, Germany, and the UK. The deal covers most of Hotelplan’s business, and will keep its brands, employees, and sales channels in place.

The top of Asia

Hong-Kong based Klook just raised $100M, a year after securing $210M. The company wants to expand in new markets, and at the same wants to strengthen its position in Asia. Japan is a big focus, as it looks to bring in more international travelers.

At the same time, Klook is working on AI-driven tools and teaming up with tourism boards. The experiences market is getting more competitive, and this positions Klook for their next stage of growth.

Rethinking loyalty

Manchester-based Arcube just raised $1.5M to rethink airline rewards. Instead of collecting miles that most travelers never use, their platform lets airlines offer things that people actually want, like priority boarding, lounge access, and chauffeur services.

They ran a pilot test with Etihad that proved it works, increasing customer spending by 10.3% and generating $1.6M in extra revenue. Now, Arcube is in talks with 14 airlines and looking beyond aviation to bring its model to other travel sectors.