Travel

Helsinki — In a stride towards revolutionizing the European hospitality sector, Finnish tech-enabled hospitality operator Bob W has announced its Series B funding of EUR 40 million. This round, led by Evli Growth Partners and joined by growth capital investors and prominent European entrepreneurs, including Taavet+Sten, the investment firm of Wise’s founder Taavet Hinrikus and Sten Tamkivi, Flashpoint, and Supercell’s …

The world’s leading startup conference Slush has decided to revoke the prize funding valued of 1M€ for Immigram, the Slush100 pitching competition winner after its alleged connections to Russia and Russian experts who want to exit their homeland. The company has also a presence in Russia. Immigram and its founders Anastasia Miroljubova and Mikhail Sharonov have created a platform, which …

Estonian travel startup Guide.me recently competed in the Welcome Challenge, a tourism-focused pitching competition in the country of Georgia. The rapid growth in tourism activities in Georgia is a major reason why investors sees Georgia as “currently underserved” by Nordic startups. Which industry employs one in ten people globally and accounts for ten percent of the world’s GDP? Hint: It’s the …

People with Disabilities Are Missing out Places and Events Because of Lack of Info Disabled people who travel might find themselves in an uncharted area full of obstacles and miss places worth visiting just because these locations lack information about accessibility. Now, Travable, a mobile application from an Icelandic startup with the same name is looking to change that. Designed …

How Can Hotels Improve Their Guest Journey with Bookboost? Businesses today are facing new challenges posed mainly by the changing customer behaviour. New trends are being set by the millennials, dubbed the “experience generation”, whose expectations are primarily based on experiences rather than the sense of ownership. This generation has, as such, affected the creation of new business models where …

Last weekend, Sweden’s first travel hackathon, Startup Weekend Travel Edition, took place in Stockholm. The event was arranged by the global entrepreneur network, Startup Weekend, with Amadeus as the main sponsor. During 54 intense hours, over 60 participants developed business ideas for the travel industry, while networking with leading decision makers, as well as industry and innovation experts. During the …

Trip Republic, the Helsinki based travel planning and booking startup, has launched the full version of the travel planner. Over 3000 travel plans have been created using the planner in the four months since beta launch. Trip Republic has become the social travel planner with the largest amount of connected travel suppliers, partnering up with Booking.com, Skyscanner, Viator, Musement, Uber …

Trip Republic, the Helsinki-based startup based on travel planning and booking, has just secured a €200,000 round,  bringing their total funding amount since starting to €325,000. The startup was featured earlier this year at Travel Technology Europe  in London, where they were the sole Nordic company nominated for the prestigious Travel Technology Disrupt Award. The funding will be used to …

Startup Tourism, a new 10-week accelerator program held in Iceland from February 1st, 2016, is now in full swing.   As the number of tourists in Iceland increases exponentially, startups rush to fill the challenges that arise. Oddur Sturluson, managing director of Startup Tourism, believes there has been a paradigm shift among tourism companies in Iceland, spurned by recent history. “After …

Norwegian startup Haxi has been given the green light to continue operations.  The court has ruled that the startup is not breaking the law, and can therefore continue to run their shared transport service. Haxi has won an appeals trial in the Norwegian Court of Appeals, following a police complaint on the “pirate” taxi company in 2014.  Three of Haxi’s …

Helsinki-based Trip Republic have been nominated for the Travel Technology Disrupt Award, the at the Travel Technology Europe conference in London on February 24-25th.  They are the sole Nordic company nominated this year. Trip Republic has developed a seamless travel planning and booking solution and is currently in beta mode, with plans to launch a full website and iOS application next …

The Norwegian startup Routes uses user-generated routes to solve the problem of complex travel planning. We met Routes at Oslo Innovation Week, where the founders pitched to investors and tried to grow their audience at the Afterwork Startup event at the newly relaunched co-working space MESH. “We started out with testing the concept on an event in Oslo, a popular …

Tourboks  an online portal that provides tourist attraction activities to the Asian market, is a “Chinese friendly” platform, despite it’s Danish origins. Originally reported in Øresund Startups. It is the sister company of a Danish company, Uniko Holding, which was established in 2009. The firm is now international and has 5 different companies: Uniko ApS, Eurotime ApS, Cafe Apothek Hellerup …

As exciting and interesting it is to live abroad,  the experience comes with many challenges. For example, communication, contact, and building of relationships can be quite a pickle when you move to a new place. Plane is an icebreaker app for expats in Scandinavia built to solve exactly those challenges. “We built Plane to address an itch I had when …

Inspired by SXSW, Reeperbahn Festival is Germany’s largest club festival and since its debut in 2006 it has grown to become one of the most important meeting places for the music industry worldwide. In 2009, the organizers introduced a business and startup space at the conference and has partnered with Hamburg Startups to highlight the local and international startup scene …