travel
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Hyatt sells the hotel. Keeps the guest.
A motel near LAX became a global hospitality company. Its next chapter depends on a curious idea: the most valuable part of a hotel may be the relationship, rather than the building.
Marriott’s real business is bringing you back
The room is only the beginning. Marriott built a business around the next booking - and persuaded thousands of hotel owners to help pay for it.
Evolve sells the booking. You keep the keys.
A vacation home is two businesses: filling the calendar and taking care of the house. Evolve built a company around letting owners buy one without surrendering the other.
Wander discovered it didn’t need to own the view
Wander began by buying beautiful vacation homes. Its more interesting discovery was how much of the holiday it could control without holding the deed.
Audi on demand made car rental predictable. Then the pickup moved.
One silver Audi, one app, fewer surprises. The company that began as Silvercar discovered how much a promise of convenience depends on where the car is parked.
The Newsletter That Had to Learn Its Readers' Names
InsideHook built a business by telling busy men where to go next. Fourteen years later, it decided the more useful question was who they wanted to hear it from.
The Point PR knows a hotel room can be a magazine set
A Hollywood penthouse, four photo shoots and a useful lesson in publicity: give people something they can use. Inside the hospitality agency turning places into stories.
Club de Lectores Turns the Newspaper Into a Weekend Plan
El Mercurio’s subscriber club sells a life beyond the front page: books, ski days, wine tastings and trips abroad. Its appeal lies in the overlap between what readers follow and what they do next.
The Cruise Line That Killed the Dinner Bell
How a single second-hand ship out of Miami grew into a $9.5 billion cruise empire - and why ditching the assigned dinner table turned out to be its best idea.
The Hospitality Giant That Owns Almost No Hotels
Hilton runs more than 8,000 hotels across 140-plus countries and barely holds the deeds to any of them. The real business is a fee machine wrapped around 200 million loyalty members - and it started with one man and a cheap hotel in Cisco, Texas.
Ocean Casino Resort
Ocean Casino Resort took Atlantic City's most conspicuous white elephant and turned it into a business built on the one thing rivals cannot copy: the view. Now a fresh owner, another renovation cycle and a wider entertainment portfolio are testing how far that advantage can travel.
Accor
Accor began with a roadside Novotel and grew into a 45-brand hospitality system. Its most valuable room may now be the one it never owns.
Hilton Grand Vacations
Hilton Grand Vacations sells something more complicated than a hotel room: a repeatable claim on future holidays. Its real product is the machinery that turns deeds, points, loans and resort operations into a travel habit for more than 720,000 members.
Hertz
Hertz made its name handing travelers a set of keys. Its next act is about everything around the car - buying it well, keeping it moving, selling it smartly and, increasingly, running fleets for machines and people alike.
IHG Hotels & Resorts
IHG looks like a hotel company from the lobby. Behind the desk, it is a fee-driven platform connecting 21 brands, thousands of property owners and more than 160 million loyalty members - with very little real estate on its own balance sheet.
Dagne Dover
Dagne Dover is a New York-based direct-to-consumer accessories brand founded in 2013 that designs hyper-functional bags - backpacks, totes, diaper bags, and luggage - engineered around organization and everyday problem-solving. Built by three women who bootstrapped rather than chasing venture capital, the brand is known for its signature neoprene 365 Collection, recycled Repreve linings, and an 'Almost Vintage' resale program that extends the life of its products.
Telgani | Rent a car
Telgani is a Riyadh-based digital car-rental marketplace that lets people in Saudi Arabia book a vehicle from their phone and have it delivered to their door - or waiting at the airport - in about an hour. Founded in 2018, the platform aggregates 75+ rental brands and tens of thousands of cars into a single app, offering daily, monthly and yearly plans plus flexible subscriptions. Backed by strategic investors including Toyota distributor Hala Auto and Elm Company, Telgani has raised more than $9 million to modernize a fragmented car-rental sector across the Kingdom.
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.
JAZ Hotel Group
JAZ Hotel Group is the hospitality arm of Travco Group International, Egypt's largest travel conglomerate. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Sheikh Zayed City, Giza, JAZ owns and manages a portfolio of 70-plus beach resorts and hotels concentrated on Egypt's Red Sea and Mediterranean coasts, with newer properties in Zanzibar and the UAE. Its brands - JAZ, JAZ Elite, JAZ Neo, Iberotel, Solymar and others - focus largely on all-inclusive leisure travel for European and regional holidaymakers.
KEY.co
KEY.co is an Austin-based luxury travel company that reimagines the vacation rental as a hotel-grade service experience. It curates design-forward homes and pairs them with in-home services - pre-arrival grocery stocking, private chefs, in-home spa and massage, and a dedicated guest-services team - across dozens of destinations in the U.S., Caribbean, Mexico and Canada. Founded in 2014 by Kim Lalande, the company operates as a three-sided marketplace connecting travelers, property managers and local vendors, and has raised roughly $15.8M to date.
Going
Going is a travel-technology company that emails and pings its members when airfare drops - whether that is a genuine bargain, a limited flash sale, or an airline's outright 'mistake fare.' Founded by journalist Scott Keyes as Scott's Cheap Flights after he snagged a $130 round-trip from New York to Milan in 2013, the company built a subscription business around a simple idea: instead of hunting for a cheap flight to a place you already picked, let a mix of algorithms and human flight experts tell you where you can go cheaply right now. Renamed Going in January 2023, the Boulder, Colorado company serves roughly two million travelers across free and paid tiers.
Le Walk
Le Walk is a location-based, immersive travel app that turns your phone and headphones into a private walking-tour guide. Using GPS-triggered audio narration, cinematic soundscapes, and world-class local guides, it walks you around a city at your own pace - no group tours, no fixed schedules - across 22+ languages. Built by three former TikTok employees and operating as Routes AI, Inc., the company launched publicly in September 2025 with a $4.1M seed round and is scaling from a handful of European cities toward 25+ destinations.
Odynn
Odynn is a New York-based fintech infrastructure company that lets banks, card issuers, fintechs, and travel brands stand up embedded travel, loyalty, and rewards programs through an AI-powered, modular, API-first platform. Often described as 'the AI Shopify for loyalty and travel,' it connects cardholders to dozens of airline, hotel, and bank loyalty programs, shows the real cash value of points and miles in real time, and powers white-label travel portals that can go live in weeks rather than the 18-plus months typical of legacy providers.
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.
Turo
Turo is the world's largest peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace, connecting people who want to rent a car with everyday car owners who list their vehicles. Instead of a fleet of identical sedans behind an airport counter, Turo offers roughly 340,000 cars across 1,600 makes and models - from electric Teslas and pickup trucks to convertibles and classic exotics - bookable through an app or website. The platform handles transactions, host protection plans, liability insurance and roadside assistance, letting owners earn income from idle cars and guests find the exact vehicle they want, often delivered to the airport or their door.
Aero
Aero is a Los Angeles-based semi-private airline that sells individual seats on custom-configured business jets, slotting itself between full private charter and commercial first class. Founded in 2019 out of Garrett Camp's Expa studio, it flies all-black Embraer ERJ-135 jets reconfigured to 16 leather seats from private terminals on routes like Los Angeles to Aspen, Los Cabos, Napa and Maui, letting guests arrive about 20 minutes before departure for fares roughly comparable to premium commercial cabins.
Riders Share
Riders Share is the largest peer-to-peer motorcycle rental marketplace in the U.S., connecting motorcycle owners with vetted riders. Founded by Guillermo Cornejo after a costly crash left him unable to afford a new bike, the Austin-based platform turns underused garages full of Harleys, Ducatis and BMWs into income for owners and affordable rides for the 20+ million ex-riders who want to get back on two wheels. It layers machine-learning rider screening, proprietary insurance backed by Lloyd's of London, and roadside assistance on top of a simple Airbnb-for-motorcycles model.
AAA Mountain West Group
AAA Mountain West Group is the not-for-profit auto club formerly known as AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah. Headquartered in Walnut Creek, California, it serves AAA members across seven western states - Northern California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska - with roadside assistance, insurance, travel planning, financial services and discounts. Rooted in a 1900 gathering of motoring enthusiasts in San Francisco, it is one of the largest clubs in the national AAA federation.
Airbnb
Airbnb is a global travel marketplace that lets hosts rent out homes, rooms, and experiences to guests in more than 220 countries and regions. Born in 2008 from three air mattresses on a San Francisco apartment floor, it turned spare space into a category-defining business, went public in 2020 at roughly a $100 billion valuation, and in 2025 expanded beyond stays into Services and a redesigned Experiences product - positioning itself as an everything app for travel.
Afar
Afar is a purpose-driven travel media company built around the idea that the best trips change the people who take them. Launched in 2009 from a chance trip to India, it now publishes a quarterly print magazine, a daily-updated website, podcasts, video, newsletters and travel experiences for a community of curious, conscientious travelers.