A travel media publisher challenges the OTA industry

In 1996 Bill Gates famously declared: “content is king”. He predicted that once the Internet had fully emerged, real money would be made with content — just as in traditional broadcasting.

However, just like many media publishers who have been struggling to create an attractive online offering for their target groups, OTAs throughout the travel industry have failed to provide meaningful content that positively impacts their business. In part, this is because OTAs don’t have experience making content — it’s simply not in their DNA. But slowly, first promising examples emerge: London-based startup Culture Trip has built a flourishing travel content platform. …

The rental bike market is on fire. Berlin alone is home to approximately ten providers: Obike, Mobike, Limebike, Ofo, Byke, Nextbike, Donkey Republic, Lidl Bikes (which is the Berlin “Call a Bike” version by Deutsche Bahn) and soon also Uber Bikes (Jump). Every day new players enter the market or leave it in a hurry — just as fast as they came. Everyone is talking about public rental bicycle systems, which have earned negative headlines in many places. …

Around the world, an unprecedented amount of venture capital is flowing into ride, bike, and home sharing startups. They have therefore been able to scale with astonishing speed. Reflecting this abundance of funding, these categories dominate and define the public picture of Travel & Mobility Tech.

There is another category of Travel and Mobility Tech, however, that likewise emerges from the omni-present sharing economy and marketplaces — Tours & Activities. While this category is only starting to gain interest in the rest of the world, Asia has long been the global driving force of this category.

Airports around the world all share the same problem: they are unable to build meaningful and engaging digital touchpoints. Declining aeronautical revenue, fees charged to airlines, along with the trend of growing revenues from retail and concessions are motivating airports to adjust their monetization schemes. This entails increasing direct engagement with an ever-more mobile-savvy audience — the connected traveler.

Airports worldwide are instead wasting a lot of money building proprietary mobile apps that only gather dust in the app stores. By the end of 2018, about 80% of the world’s airports will have apps for engaging passengers. …

Every year, millions of premium-class seats fly empty across the globe, representing billions of dollars in unrealized revenue. New York-based Plusgrade helps airlines such as Lufthansa, Air China, and Etihad to capture additional, incremental high-margin revenue through a successful Software-As-A-Service-platform.