TNMT Newsletter #197: Keep moving (or get fined)
Hi there,
Earlier this year, we published our “10 years of travel trends” overview, mapping the defining theme of each year.
For 2024, we coined it the year of “Passion Travel” when concerts, sports, and cultural events became some of the biggest drivers for travel demand.
And in case you needed a reminder that Passion Travel is still very much a thing in 2025, TikTok has provided all the evidence we need.
Footage from Las Vegas last weekend shows Formula 1 fans riding escalators for hours just to watch the Grand Prix for free.
Honestly, we’ve seen some creative hacks in travel over the years, but “endless escalator travel” is a new genre.
Speaking of themes shaping our industry, we are working hard on reviewing our 2025 Travel Outlook from earlier this year.
(Translation: We’re somewhere between dozens of open tabs, spreadsheets, and philosophical debates about whether “AI fatigue” is a trend or a mood).
Give us a few more weeks.
Until then, let’s wrap up our final major research workstream from 2025.
Scroll down to learn more.
Your Lufthansa Innovation Hub Team
Research
Europe’s Hidden Champions: The Grand Finale
As many of you (hopefully) remember, earlier this year, we set out to challenge a persistent (and frankly tired) narrative that:
Europe is a continent of red tape, endlessly reinventing bottle caps while other regions (especially the U.S.) build breakout tech companies.
Not entirely untrue… but definitely too generic.
And it ignores a growing wave of hyper-ambitious European founders building real, category-defining Travel and Mobility Tech companies.
That’s why we launched the European Standout Series: our year-long effort to spotlight some of the continent’s most compelling, often under-appreciated innovators shaping the future of travel.
Over the past months, we explored five major categories, each with its own hidden champions.
Here’s a quick overview:
Five categories. Nine standout companies.
Today, we unveil the final category and introduce the tenth and final hidden champion of our 2025 list.
LET'S ENTER UNICORN LAND
To introduce our 10th and final European standout, we need to make a quick detour into a very exclusive neighborhood: Unicorn Land – the elite club of hyper-growth startups valued at more than $1 billion USD.
When looking at the current unicorn club (across all sectors), Europe is far less irrelevant than some people like to suggest.
A quiet shift, but a powerful one, and another signal that Europe’s tech output is reaching levels even the skeptics didn’t see coming.
Which brings us to today’s featured company.
Oh, and one more thing: it’s the only B2B hospitality tech company in the world with unicorn status.
Our final European standout is Mews .
MEWS: EUROPE'S HOSPITALITY TECH UNICORN
While Mews is still “new” to many in the wider tech scene, it’s anything but new in hospitality.
Fast-forward to today, and Mews has become one of the world’s most important hospitality technology companies, and the only pure-play B2B hospitality unicorn globally.
WHAT MEWS ACTUALLY DOES
Mews provides an end-to-end hospitality cloud for hotel operators. Essentially, the digital backbone that runs a modern hotel.
Its platform covers:
In short: Mews is the OS for hotels, powering everything from check-in to housekeeping to data pipelines.
And the company has fully cracked the scaling challenge that many claim European startups can’t solve:
That’s not a startup anymore; that’s a category leader.
THE FOUNDER EFFECT
Another element that sets Mews apart?
Its founders.
Anyone who attended the FutureTravel Summit in Barcelona earlier this month saw CEO Matthijs Welle on stage: charismatic, sharp, and genuinely inspiring when talking about the future of travel and hotel tech.
And founder Richard Valtr has earned a reputation across the industry as one of hospitality tech’s most provocative thinkers, challenging legacy models, legacy infrastructure, and legacy assumptions.
(If you haven’t yet, watch his Skift interview below.)
AGGRESSIVE, MORE AGGRESSIVE, MOST AGGRESSIVE
But there’s another way Mews distinguishes itself even more: its scaling strategy.
The company has raised nearly $500 million USD to date (that’s half a billion!), including a $75 million USD Series D this March.
But instead of spending it on marketing burn, Mews has taken a hyper-strategic acquisition approach:
Flexkeeping (a housekeeping automation platform) strengthens the operational stack, but DataChat is the real game-changer.
It marks a major step toward building fully agentic hospitality systems, where intelligent agents autonomously:
This aggressive (and admittedly risky) acquisition approach currently places Mews well ahead of other hospitality-tech players, including both startups and incumbents like Oracle and Cloudbeds.
A HOSPITALITY TECH UNICORN...WITH ITS OWN VC ARM
Another element that sets Mews apart is its governance structure.
To support its appetite for acquisitions, Mews built Mews Ventures: its own in-house venture vehicle.
Highly untypical for a VC-backed scale-up, but perfectly aligned with its strategy: own the ecosystem, shape the category, and consolidate the fragmented hotel-tech landscape.
CLOSING THE 2025 EUROPEAN STANDOUT SERIES
This wraps up our 2025 European Standout Research Storyline.
If you want to revisit all previous categories and contenders, check out the full article.
It’s all there, from rockets to robots to roaming wheelchairs.
Press Picks
Our Recommended Must Reads
MORE EUROPEAN MOMENTUM – The European startup ecosystem is entering a new phase of maturity, with stronger funding dynamics, more global ambition, and increasing visibility on the world stage. The region is positioning itself as a serious contender in the global innovation race.
AI IN TRAVEL – PhocusWire explores how AI is shaping travel differently across consumer-facing and business-facing segments, citing our TNMT AI mapping to illustrate how airlines and travel platforms are approaching AI adoption.
THE FUTURE OF AIRPORTS – McKinsey outlines how airports must evolve to meet the demands of rising passenger volumes, sustainability pressures, and digital transformation, redefining what “the next normal” looks like for global aviation hubs.
TRAVEL SUBSCRIPTIONS – eDreams Odigeo reports its subscriber base has grown by 20%, highlighting the increasing appeal of travel subscription models as travelers seek flexibility, savings, and bundled value.
AIRLINE INNOVATION HUB – Qantas is bringing technology development in-house through its new innovation centre, signalling a shift toward tighter control of digital strategy and a stronger focus on rapid experimentation.
TRAVEL X GOOGLE – Google has rolled out its AI-driven flight deals tool worldwide, integrating new travel features into Search to enhance price tracking, comparison, and deal discovery for users.
Deal Tracker
Most Recent Investment Deals
– VC –
Ramp - the US-based platform for corporate and travel expense management, raised $300 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. New investors included Alpha Wave Global, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, 1789 Capital, Epicenter Capital, and Coral Capital. This funding round values the company at $32 billion.
Alembic Technologies - the company that uses AI to predict ROI from marketing and has worked with Delta Air Lines, secured $145 million in Series B venture funding led by Prysm Capital and Accenture, with participation from Silver Lake Waterman, Liquid 2 Ventures, NextEquity, Friends & Family Capital, and WndrCo. This is the company’s second funding round this year; it last raised $93.5 million in Series A funding in March.
Peek - the US-based software and marketplace for tours and activities, raised $70 million in later-stage venture funding led by Springcoast Capital Partners, with participation from Goldman Sachs, WestCap, Eric Schmidt, and Paul English. The company will use the capital to expand its AI platform and integrate recent acquisitions. The deal strengthens Peek’s position as an operating system for experiences.
Vay - the Berlin-based remote driving technology provider, raised $60 million in late-stage venture funding from Grab, the Singapore-based superapp, with potential additional investment of $350 million pending the completion of certain financial and operational milestones. The deal will support Vay's expansion in the US.
pay.com.au - the Australian B2B payments and rewards platform that allows customers to redeem points through travel partners, including Qantas and Singapore Airlines, has raised $53 million in Series B funding led by Morgans Financial. Founded in 2019, this is the company’s sixth funding round to date. @
Netomi - the US-based customer service automation platform that works with travel companies like Delta, United Airlines, Virgin Voyages, and MGM Resorts raised $43 million in funding from undisclosed investors. The capital supports the growth of its agentic architecture and strengthens its position in enterprise-grade CX automation.
BoomPop - the US-based digital event planning platform for company retreats and other events raised $41 million in a combination of debt and equity. The $25 million equity portion was led by Wing Venture Capital, with participation from Atomic, Acme, Four Rivers, Thayer Investment Partners, and others. The company was founded in 2020 and started out as a virtual events platform, but has since moved into in-person events.
Arrived - the platform for fractional real estate investing for properties, including vacation rentals, raised $27 million through a combination of debt and Series B funding. The round was led by Neo and Left Lane Capital, with participation from Forerunner Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, Core Innovation Capital, and Spencer Rascoff. The company has launched the Arrived Secondary Market, a marketplace enabling investors to buy and sell shares of individual rental homes.
i6 Group - the provider of digital fuel management solutions for the aviation industry raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Yttrium with participation from existing investors International Airlines Group (IAG), World Kinect, and Shell Ventures. The capital will support international expansion, further investment in technology and data infrastructure, and strengthen the team setup.
Milestone - the Israeli startup that tracks GenAI tool usage and ROI for engineering workflows and works with travel brand Kayak, has raised $10 million in seed funding led by San Francisco-based Heavybit and Israeli fund Hanaco Ventures. Founded in 2022, this is the company’s second funding round to date.
MAIC Hospitality Solutions - the Luxembourg-based hotel ops platform secured just over $1 million in early-stage funding led by Expon Capital with participation from LBAN, an angel network from Luxembourg. The company will use the capital to support international scale-up and provide product capabilities for independent hotels and multi-property groups.
VOLANT AEROTECH - the China-based eVTOL developer, raised an undisclosed amount in Series B funding. The round included investors such as Aima Technology Group, Jiangsu Pacific Precision Forging Company, and Jiangsu Bojun Industrial. The company will use the funding for airworthiness certification and mass production preparation.
WAmazing株式会社 – the Japan-based travel tech company raised an undisclosed amount of later-stage venture funding from CS-C, the Awa Bank, Maison Marc, with additional participation from Awagin Growth Enterprise, READY NOW, Miraidoa, and Quantum Leaps Capital Partners. The funding will help WAmazing collaborate with local governments, convert cultural assets into tourism content, and strengthen international exchange initiatives.
– M&A –
Connect&GO - the provider of technology and RFID solutions for the attractions industry was acquired by Peek, the software provider and marketplace for tours and activities, for an undisclosed sum. The deal solidifies Peek's position as a market leader in the experiences industry and expands its reach.
ACME Technologies Inc. - the provider of ticketing infrastructure for the attractions industry has been acquired by Peek, the software provider and marketplace for tours and activities, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition strengthens Peek's tech stack for the experiences industry.
Guestworks - the vacation rental management company operated by Vacasa has been acquired by Evolve Vacation Rental Network for an undisclosed amount. The asset purchase transaction brings roughly 1000 owner contracts to Evolve.
Overlap - the US-based travel app for digital nomads and adventure travelers was acquired by Pangea, a travel app for planning and sharing trips among group travelers, for an undisclosed sum. This marks Pangea’s first acquisition and is a step in Pangea's multi-year plan to consolidate the fragmented travel planning sector under one platform.