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Hi there,

Earlier this week, I returned from a one-week family vacation on the beautiful Greek island of Rhodes. 

The weather was great.

The souflaki was tasty. 

The air travel experience was…not so great. 
  • The online check-in didn’t work for all flight legs. 
  • We missed our connecting flight and there was no option to rebook online.
  • Our luggage didn’t make it to the final destination and the digital bag tracking didn’t work properly.
The result: Total exasperation. 

We wasted hours in the airline’s mobile app trying to figure things out.

Nothing worked.

Ultimately, we were forced to line up at different service counters in two airports, with two little kids crying.

To make matters worse, there was no wifi available on three out of the four flights we took, even though the airline in question promoted this onboard benefit. But the lack of internet access was the least of our worries.

So, why am I telling you this? 

Well, it always feels good to commiserate with others. I appreciate you bearing with me.

More importantly, this experience might be a friendly reminder to this audience of travel innovators (and myself) about one important thing:

It’s fun to speculate about the future of travel, whether it’s
NFTs and blockchain or air taxis and hydrogen flying.

However, the current level of digitalization in the airline industry rarely fixes basic disruptions, ones that are all too common. 

Today’s customer experience should be at the forefront of innovation. 

And there is lots of work to be done.

With this being said, here are three previous research pieces that best sum up the current lack of digital readiness in the aviation context:
Now, with all of this off my chest, let’s head off to this week’s brand-new research output.

Keep scrolling down.
Lennart Dobravsky
Editor-in-Chief
 Research 

Blurred Travel: Redefining Classic Travel Categories

The pandemic-induced work revolution is blurring the lines between the home and office as well as business and leisure travel. 

In our latest research piece, we unravel new consumer needs in a strategic framework and explore opportunities for travel providers. 

Here is a sneak peek.

Pre-pandemic, we could distinguish between the home and office as well as business and leisure travel. 

It looked something like this.
As you can see:
  • It was easy to draw lines between work life in the office (Quadrant I) and private life at home (Quadrant II). 
  • Similarly, people would primarily travel for business purposes, which included conferences and client meetings as a top priority (Quadrant III) or for leisure to relax and explore (Quadrant IV).
However, the lines between these categories started to blur amid the pandemic. 

In fact, these quadrants started to blur within each other. 
  • In Quadrant II, the category of the home has expanded and is a place where work can take place, rather than just be used for personal reasons.
  • As well, new Blurred Travel use cases have emerged at the intersections of these four quadrants.
What does this all mean?

We explored these emerging Blurred Travel categories and shared a range of ideas on how travel providers can address this new landscape of travel types.

 
Read in full
 Press Picks 

Our Recommended Must Reads 

BANKS & TRAVEL – U.S. bank Chase is doubling down on travel as an aspirational commerce category for its customers, with giant numbers to back up its ambitions. Expect more travel M&A by major banks.
 Read more by Skift
AIRLINE GREENWASHING  Aviation giant KLM to face legal action in first major challenge to airline industry ‘greenwashing’.
 Read more by CNBC  
NO APPLE CAR? – Apple has reportedly been working on self-driving car technology since 2014, but it has faced a series of prominent employee departures over the past year. 
 Read more by ARS Technica
AIRBNB EXITS CHINA – Airbnb says it will be removing all 150,000 of its listings in China. Local hosts and users don't seem to care.
 Read more by Insider
PARIS CUTS POLLUTION – After the 2024 Olympic Games end, Paris plans to close two lanes of its beltway to regular traffic in a bid to reduce air and noise pollution.
 Read more bBloomberg  
HOTEL NFTS – Some resort owners think they have found a way to avoid getting stuck with excess inventory when guests cancel at the last minute. It involves converting room nights for sale into NFTs.
 Read more by The Wall Street Journal
TRAVEL FINANCING – For many travel companies, navigating the past two years has proven more challenging than normal. And recent capital market volatility has added to the pain.
 Read more bPhocusWire  
 Deal Tracker 

Most Recent Venture Capital Deals

FINN (Automotive) – the car subscription service garnered $110M in Series B funding, putting the company's pre-money valuation at an estimated $350.46M. The deal was led by Korelya Capital with the participation of ten other investors.

Arrived Homes – the platform that lets private individuals invest in rental homes raised $25M in Series A funding in a deal led by Frontrunner Ventures with participation from, among others, Bezos Ventures. This deal puts the company’s pre-money valuation at $105M.

Journera – the developer of a customer experience platform for travel companies raised $8M in venture funding from undisclosed investors.

Chain4Travel – the developer of a blockchain-based travel platform based in Switzerland received $4.38M in seed funding from Falkensteiner Ventures. The firm typically invests in restaurants, hotels, leisure and the elderly care sectors in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy.

Hostfully – the vacation rental software provider raised $4M in seed funding in a deal led by Disruption Ventures. The funding will be used to expand its products and add to its sales and customer success teams.

Mobee – the booking platform for travel products for people with reduced mobility and disabilities raised $1.58M in venture funding from Georges Sans, Bruno Couly, Beaujolais Business, Bpifrance, and other investors.

Borrow A Boat – the operator of a peer-to-peer boat chartering platform raised more than $1M via a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs. This amount even succeeded the target amount originally set at GBP750,000 ($930k) and was reportedly raised within 24 hours.

WeRide – the Chinese developer of automated driving tech for shared mobility received an undisclosed sum in corporate development capital from Bosch.

TripADeal – a 51% stake in the OTA was acquired by Qantas Airways for an undisclosed amount.

Avionix – founded in 1989, the provider of an aerospace software and hardware engineering service was acquired by Joby Aviation, the US-based eVTOL company, for an undisclosed sum.

BookingHound – the B2B online booking system for tickers, memberships, and vouchers was acquired by Beyonk, developer of an SaaS platform for selling tickets based in the UK. The deal details were not disclosed.

Shawman Software – the developer of a cloud-based hospitality solution from India was acquired by IDS Next, provider of a suite of enterprise hospitality solutions, also headquartered in India.

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