Funding to travel tech startups skyrocketed in 2015. Piggybacking off a healthy 2015, the travel tech space saw the third-highest amount of funding by quarter in Q1’16 (despite a sharp decline in deal count).
We used CB Insights data and analytics to dig into the data surrounding travel tech investment trends, including deals and dollar breakdowns, and most well-funded companies.
We defined travel tech as tech-enabled companies offering services and products focused on tourism, including booking services, search and planning platforms, on-demand travel, and recommendation sites. Car-hailing services are excluded.
Deals and dollars
Travel tech startups raised $867M across 51 deals in Q1’16, (the lowest deals total since Q4’14). While the quarter saw a significant drop in deal count, it also marked a strong recovery in funding, up 133%, after the plunge in Q4’15. That points to a quarter that saw relatively few, but very large deals on average
In fact, the three largest travel tech deals in Q1’16 accounted for 62% of funding. Each of the three deals took went to startups based outside the US: India-based Ibibo Group, Scotland-based Skyscanner, and China-based Travelzen.
Most well-funded startups
Two of the the top 10 most well-funded travel tech startups have raised more than $1B in total funding to date.
The list includes notable unicorns like Airbnb, TuJia, and South America-based flight- and hotel-booking site Decolar. Several of the most well-funded companies on our list raised in Q1’16, including India-based Ibibo Group and Scotland-based Skyscanner (the latter is also on our unicorn list).
| Rank | Company | Total Disclosed Funding ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | AirBnB | $2.3B |
| 2 | LY.com | $1.2B |
| 3 | TuJia Online Information Technology | $464M |
| 4 | Decolar | $291M |
| 5 | Ibibo Group | $273M |
| 6 | Skyscanner | $192M |
| 7 | HotelUrbano | $130M |
| 8 | Oyo Rooms | $126M |
| 9 | Zhubaijia | $109M |
| 10 | Mafengwo | $105M |
Want more travel tech data? Check out our venture capital database below.