In Phocus

The travel industry has had pretty much everything thrown at it in the first six months of 2025. It has faced ongoing global conflict, economic instability, political uncertainty and challenges related to climate change.

The second quarter earnings of online travel agencies, hotel groups and airlines reflected some of this turmoil. Airlines blamed macroeconomic factors for revenue losses and demand uncertainty, while the CEOs of hotel groups and OTAs were cautiously optimistic.

The constant in travel that leaders come back to again and again is its resilience—bounce-backs after an ash cloud, stock market crashes and a pandemic spring to mind. While travel was down in certain regions of the world, travel companies are often quick to pivot to other destinations and products to compensate.

In an interview in the PhocusWire studio, Go City CEO Jon Owen said that Europe is having a great year, with some cities seeing an increase in visitor numbers.

"I think ultimately what you need to do as a business is just keep going—you can't affect European reluctance to travel to California at the moment, but what you can do is keep building the right products for customers, and those market trends will change," he said.

He was joined in the studio by Linda Bryndísardóttir, vice president of business development for Dohop, who said that the situation was not as "bleak" as it might sound.

"If you look at numbers from IATA, for example, the number of passengers is growing year over year, even in the U.S. Asia is growing quite fast. We're increasing our partnerships in Asia," she said.

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Loyalty has long helped brands drive engagement but not everything is plain sailing in the travel loyalty world.

The landscape is shifting with younger generations demanding something different from programs and companies reassessing what's working. At the end of last year, for example, Morning Consult reported that travelers aren’t totally satisfied with programs as they exist. And in 2023, McKinsey reported that an airline’s loyalty program's capability to convince travelers to choose their airline over another, was declining.

So, where are travel brands going wrong when it comes to loyalty? Mark Ross-Smith, CEO of Loyalty Status Co., and Robert Wesley, CEO of MeProtocol, weighed in on how brands can improve loyalty strategies during a studio interview at Phocuswright Europe in Barcelona.

During the wide-ranging discussion, Wesley and Ross-Smith also touched on the use of blockchain in loyalty, how artificial intelligence plays into loyalty’s evolution, the importance of personalization and more.

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Travel’s tours and activities sector has been growing in recent years, and the space is continuing to evolve in 2025.

Industry leaders opened up about current trends during a studio interview with senior reporter Morgan Hines at Phocuswright Europe earlier this summer. 

Right now, experts said there are some key shifts tied to demographic, booking behavior and emerging technology, all of which could shape the future of the space.

Roisin O'Sullivan, global managing director of Walks and Devour, said there has been a change in the demographic of travelers who are booking experiences.

Craig Everett, co-founder and CEO of Holibob, said the booking window is consistently moving closer to the date of travel.

Ali Basij, founder, chief technology officer and CEO of Instahop, said artificial intelligence (AI) is this year's biggest trend.

The wide-ranging conversation also touched on the concept of original experiences, as touted by big-name brands such as Airbnb and GetYourGuide, autonomous experiences, the booking funnel and more.

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Peter O’Donovan's career has included several leadership roles, and he now sits as the CEO of CarTrawler. O'Donovan was appointed to the role in 2022 after four years as chief operations officer.

CarTrawler works to connect clients and travel brands to mobility solutions and car rentals across the world.

During a CEO Spotlight interview in the PhocusWire studio at Phocuswright Europe, O’Donovan discussed what motivates him, CarTrawler’s use of artificial intelligence and how it’s preparing for agentic AI and the challenges he faces as a CEO, among other topics. Watch the full discussion with PhocusWire's Morgan Hines. 

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The travel industry is known for being susceptible to just about everything, from financial downturns and global conflict to rapid technological development and climate change. However, it's also known for its ability to bounce back—often quite quickly.

At Phocuswright Europe 2025, CheckYeti, a specialist in outdoor experiences, and WingBuddy, a packaged tour operator, joined us in the PhocusWire studio to discuss what it's like to be a niche player in such turbulent times.

CheckYeti CEO Jakob Keller and Michael Carfagnini, chief operating officer of WingBuddy, said that as smaller, more agile operators, they have the ability to adapt more quickly to outside influences and build trust with customers. 

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If the first quarter of 2025 proved lackluster for travel startup funding with only about $1 billion going into newcomers in the space, the second quarter slipped further.

It seems all the headlines around tariffs as well as the political uncertainty and global conflict may have put investments on hold, with only about $800 million going into travel startups, according to Phocuswright’s Travel Startups Interactive Database.

If funding levels continue along this trend, the total come end of 2025 could be around $4 billion, significantly less than 2024’s $5.5 billion and a far cry from 2021’s record $16 billion.

The lack of funding for travel startups as well as the scarcity of exits were discussed during a recent interview with Nick Cocks, founder and managing partner of Singapore-based Velocity Ventures. He touched the current attitude to risk, boardroom paralysis and IPOs being shelved.

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During an interview at the PhocusWire studio at Phocuswright Europe, Maxim Sevastianov, founder and CEO of Trava, said he defines API connectivity success in the course of a long game.

“You define that there is a certain need in the market for that particular application, right?” he said. “Then you develop and you talk to the customers, of course, and they say there is a need for that.”

However, it's unlikely that success will be immediate.

“I would say three to six months later, that's when I would say whether it's successful when you look at the numbers,” Sevastianov said. “It's not gonna happen a week or two, or whatever it takes a few months.” 

But with new technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) advancing at a rapid pace, the definition of success for connectivity providers could be shifting, too.

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As travel came to a screeching halt during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jari Virtanen, CEO of Stena Line Travel and Retail Group, was faced with a blank slate. 

So, Virtanen, who oversees a portfolio of brands including Sembo, European Online Flights, Motorist and Best Travel, took the time to innovate and look to the future.

According to Virtanen, at the time, he looked at larger online travel agencies (OTAs) and noticed that while they'd improved the user experience on their websites, the search method was the same.

With this in mind, he and his team got to work on finding a way to compete with these OTAs by adding value through new technology.

The result is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot called Amelia, now live on Sembo, which has driven a 50% uptick in conversions year-over-year and a 42% price bump, Virtanen said.

“Our booking platform to begin with … it's like the Rubik's cube with all the squares separate, it's a modular thing to begin with,” he said, noting that this setup was beneficial when they started to adopt AI.

With Stena Line's AI solution, users can create an itinerary in less than two minutes, according to Virtanen.

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API-first property management system (PMS) Apaleo aims to help hoteliers scale business. And according to founder and CEO Uli Pillau, the platform give developers and startups, as well as established players, the opportunity to innovate.

“When you look at us, we are the only not all-in-one PMS in the market—we are a true platform, so our innovation comes really from all of the apps and the modules and components, which are being developed by third parties on top of our Apaleo PMS platform,” Pillau said in a recent interview with PhocusWire news editor Abby Crotty.

Founded in 2017, Apaleo describes itself on its website as “the open platform for modern hospitality,” with its latest initiative, Agent Hub, launched earlier this year. The marketplace of artificial intelligence (AI) agents is intended to help hoteliers and tech developers share, adopt, discover and build solutions based on AI. 

The company has also secured significant funding: In November 2024, the Germany-based company announced growth equity funding of €20 million, and in 2023, it raised a total of €9 million in its Series A round.

During the interview, Pillau shared an update on Agent Hub, his biggest learnings as the head of Apaleo and his thoughts on AI in the hospitality industry.

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With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), search engine optimization—or at least SEO as we know it—has been effectively kicked out of the party. And it's a “reality” that the travel sector is being forced to confront.

Mario Gavira, vice president of growth and brand for Kiwi.com, who has been vocal about the future as it relates to AI and agentic AI, said the industry has to adapt.

“Our content strategy, linking strategy has to change to adapt to the new reality,” Gavira said. “But that's the first step. Now we have to test—will these AI agents really become a new acquisition channel? Will it be only search? Will it be end-to-end transactions? Will people be willing to allow the agent to actually finish a transaction on behalf of the customer?”

What brands need to focus on is how to become visible in those results.

Amanda Moore, vice president of performance marketing for Preferred Travel Group, added that with the changing environment and the decline of SEO, public relations and personas are back on the table. But it remains to be seen how paid search will be factored in going forward.

“I think the way we think of paid search is just going to evolve in terms of its definition,” Moore said.

The two also opened up about how their roles have changed in recent year as technology has advanced, with AI having a profound impact on their workflows. Further, they touched on travel’s commercial model, the resurgence of public relations and more.

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