Category: Travel Industry

If I ran a travel startup or company, I would actively plan for 18 months of challenging capital raising times starting Q1 2023. You need to survive the next 12 months and, in all likelihood, the next 18 months without raising any additional capital. Act now if your travel startup expects to run out of money in the next six months. Make the tough decisions now to lower your burn rate and extend the financial viability of your travel startup. Prevention is better than a cure, as they say.

Our beloved travel companies are one sector bucking the trends (cue long overdue applause and cheering). This bucking of the trend is (a) not being fully appreciated or recognized, (b) it's essential to focus on the positive in addition to the negative, and (c) for travel companies to make hay while the sun is still shining.

The travel industry is NOT experiencing the case of "rising tides lift all boats"; the tide (for the travel industry) isn't rising that fast, nor as broadly, to warrant this characterization, in my opinion, as of Sep 2022. At the moment and in the future, successfully investing in travel requires an experienced travel industry veteran point of view to know where to invest and where to avoid. You cannot just be savvy and have money and expect a positive return (in my experience).

People ask if the pandemic is forcing me to switch away from exclusively investing in travel companies versus opening up our mandate for other industries, to which my response is a resounding NO. Absolutely not; it's more profitable to make travel investments with the industry turning the corner on COVID (tangibly and in sentiment). One notion from last week's discussion with Jean-Francois that particularly resonated was how significant change - everyone knows the travel industry has experienced and continues to - enables lucrative opportunities.

Every projection --- IMF, World Bank, Industry Analysts, WSJ, Bloomberg  --- I read is not just worse next year, but significantly worse.

I am cutting (global) travel industry growth targets by 15% for June/July/August summer travel. GDP growth reduction, skyrocketing inflation, consumer price increases, central bank rate increases and additional contributing factors (staff shortages, low morale..).

Mideast OTA’s simply don’t, don’t to the same level of success or been too slow in executing the right strategy.

Good news! It's (a) already back depending on

(yes you read that right). This post is intended (a) to spur markets you can cater to or research further, and (b) demonstrate travel is rebounding around the world. Turkey inbound travel had the best EVER year for inbound travel. Pakistan is growing and almost at pre-Covid levels given the players I’ve spoken with. Seychelles has capacity constraints with all the inbound travelers from South Asia and MENA. In most markets, domestic travel is growing and the first to rebound. This is the case in India, the United States, S Africa and China. All have large and growing intra-country traffic. ... Read more

ravel apps need to take a page out of the social media app handbook and publish lite versions. I feel strongly about this, and this applies to non-travel apps as well.