hotel-booking
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The room is the same. The reward changes everything.
Rocket Travel by Agoda turns hotel bookings into reasons to stay loyal. Behind the familiar names of banks, airlines and retailers sits a business built around one useful idea: make the reward worth the trip.
Ziad Minkara and the business of getting there
He started CDS in 2001 to help businesses book hotels. Twenty-five years later, Ziad Minkara is joining up the machinery of business travel - and helping other entrepreneurs find a way forward after failure.
@hotel put the deal in your feed
First came the travel videos. Then came the private room rates. How a travel-guide startup turned an Instagram audience into a different way to sell a hotel stay.
S4BT and the art of finishing the trip
Booking a room is the easy part. S4BT is assembling the technology that gets a business trip all the way through to a clean set of accounts.
RateHawk bets on the person behind the booking
A hotel room is easy to find. A booking an agent can confidently sell is harder. RateHawk has built its business in that gap.
Priceline sells the power of not knowing.
A hidden hotel name can be worth real money. Priceline built a travel business around that bargain, then spent decades learning which parts to keep.
Engine makes room for the work.
A hotel-booking side project found a bigger problem hiding behind the front desk. Now Engine is turning the messy business of work travel into infrastructure other companies can use.
ID90 Travel turns a flight perk into a whole trip
Airline employees can cross oceans on standby. ID90 Travel tackles the less glamorous obstacle: turning that uncertain seat into a holiday worth taking.
Hotel Engine and the price of an empty night
A room is easy to book. A moving workforce is harder to manage. Hotel Engine, now Engine, built its business around the receipts, changing plans and awkward check-ins that ordinary travel sites leave behind.
Despegar Is Building the Operating System for Latin America’s Vacation
The Buenos Aires-born travel company survived the dot-com bust, regional currency shocks and a pandemic. Now, inside Prosus, it is stitching flights, beds, credit, loyalty and AI into one Latin American checkout.
The Cruise Club That Turns Monthly Dues Into a Global Booking Machine
inCruises asks travelers to subscribe before they sail, then converts recurring payments, reward points and a worldwide referral network into booking power. The model can unlock meaningful travel value, but members need to understand the rules that make the engine run.
Expedia Is Building the Travel Internet Behind the Travel Internet
The familiar booking brands are only the shop window. Expedia Group's more consequential bet is to become the shared infrastructure for travelers, suppliers, advertisers and thousands of businesses that want to sell a trip.
The Leading Hotels of the World
The luxury hotel company that owns no uniform look has spent nearly a century making independence scalable. Its product is not a room so much as a pact: global reach for hotels that refuse to become interchangeable.
HXE (Huixiaoer)
HXE (Huixiaoer) is a Beijing-based MICE technology platform that lets companies search, compare and book hotel conference rooms, meeting venues and event services online. Marketed globally as Eventbest, it aggregates 150,000+ hotels and event venues, has served more than 400,000 corporate clients, and partners with major hotel groups including Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Shangri-La, Wyndham and Langham. HXE turns a traditionally offline, quote-by-phone procurement process - meetings, conferences, incentive trips and group business travel - into a one-stop digital marketplace covering venue data, price comparison, catering, accommodation and logistics.
Umrahme
Umrahme is a Dubai-based digital travel platform that lets Muslim pilgrims plan and book Umrah trips online - bundling visas, flights, Makkah and Madinah hotels, ground transport and Haramain train tickets into customizable packages. Part of the Traveazy Group and accredited by Saudi Arabia's official Nusuk platform, Umrahme launched the region's first fully digitalized B2C Umrah booking experience in October 2023, serving pilgrims across both B2B agent and direct-to-consumer channels.
Zeeyarah - Superior Tracks Travel & Tourism
Zeeyarah - Superior Tracks Travel & Tourism (Superior Tracks Travel and Tourism LLC) is a Dubai-based online travel agency and B2B travel aggregator that was the first company in the Gulf and MENA region to earn IATA NDC Level 4 certification. Branded as Zeeyarah in the Gulf and Flyintrip elsewhere, it connects consumers and travel-trade partners directly to airline and hotel inventory through New Distribution Capability (NDC) technology, offering flights, hotels, holiday packages, transfers, car rentals and cruises. Founded in 2016 by former Emirates Airlines executive Mohammed Gaus, the company blends deep airline-industry expertise with a technology-first distribution platform.
Out of Office
Out of Office (OOO) is a Chicago-based travel technology company that helps people plan trips using recommendations from the people they actually trust - friends, family, and the influencers they follow - instead of anonymous review sites. Founded in 2020 by former Trunk Club executives Jan Seale and Coabi Kastan, the app lets travelers browse curated spots across thousands of cities, build and share itineraries, book hotels, and reserve restaurant tables in one place, and more recently generate full trip plans with an AI trip generator.
Rove
Rove is a New York-based travel rewards startup building what it calls the first universal, transferable airline mile - a single points currency you can earn without a credit card. Users earn Rove Miles by booking hotels and flights through Rove's portal and by shopping online through a browser extension tied to thousands of partner merchants, then redeem those miles across a network of global airline and hotel loyalty programs. Founded by Wharton graduate Max Morganroth and Harvard dropout Arhan Chhabra out of Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch, Rove targets Gen Z and anyone locked out of traditional credit-card rewards.
Skylark
Skylark is a New York-based luxury travel company that fuses a slick online booking platform with a bench of human travel advisors. Clients search five-star hotels and privately negotiated airfare online, then hand the messy parts - upgrades, transfers, spa bookings, itinerary changes - to a real person over phone, text, email or chat. Positioned as the only true hybrid online-offline agency, Skylark packages VIP hotel perks (room upgrades, complimentary breakfast, resort credits) through its Virtuoso membership and industry partnerships.
Workgrounds
Workgrounds is a New York-based software company that automates the sourcing, booking, and management of hotel room blocks for corporate group travel. Founded in 2022 by repeat founders Nikhil Sethi and Garrett Ullom (previously of Adaptly, acquired by Accenture), it uses AI agents to run hotel RFPs, parse proposals, and negotiate group rates in the background - replacing the weeks of phone calls and emails that companies traditionally spend booking rooms for offsites, conferences, and team events. Customers include SeatGeek, RevenueCat, and Yieldmo.