How I Got Here - Inside stories behind innovation and startups in travel

There are not many startups that manage to sign a partnership agreement with a big brand before they even launch.And there are perhaps even fewer new businesses that get details written into the same ...

Dean Donovan has one foot in the past and, without doubt, one foot in the future.After a five-year career at the Bain consultancy, Donovan and his business partner (Brian Flynn) played central roles i...

Stepping into the hot seat of a family-run business that has been operating since the 1920s must be a fairly daunting task.That's what Brett Tollman in 2000 when he became CEO of The Travel Corpo...

The unconventional stories of a company's founding are often the most interesting - rather than the fairly formulaic idea-when-traveling-Y-Combinator-seed-investment-route.After studies overseas,...

HolidayPirates was born in 2012 - essentially as a travel hack for people to find cheap air tickets.This came about after co-founder Sebastian Kaatz (now the companys vice president of special product...

Alex Cruz admits that his career has been centered around people "betting on me" as a leader of businesses.During the course of over 30 years, Cruz worked for American Airlines and Sabre in ...

John Guscic is one of the increasingly rare breeds in the travel industry these days.He's an unusually straight-talking company executive who has been in the sector for many years, from the world...

The formation of Travel + Leisure Co. in January this year marked an important milestone in the career trajectory of its president Noah Brodsky.The new organization, which came about after Wyndham Des...

A common thread in Joah Searman's origin story is one of countering adversity.Localeur was born in 2013 with a mission to help people discover and share the best local places to "eat, drink ...

Ride-hailing services such as Grab, Uber and Lyft have captured a disproportionate amount of attention since their respective launches.It's easy to say this because Spain-based Cabify has fairly ...

Apple Leisure Group is a major seller of tickets, packages and hotels across multiple brands.The company was formed by way of a number of mergers and acquisitions, including most recently a deal to co...

Rolf Schromgens was broke and scarred from the experience of a previous startup when he finally sat down with his co-founders and created Trivago.The company, which is now one of the leading hotel met...

Rami Zeidan is a founder on a mission.After working in the finance and real estate worlds for the early part of his career, including overseeing such activities for Starwood, Zeidan took the plunge in...

Greg O'Hara has become an influential player on the travel scene since he joined Sabre in the 1990s.He admits to quitting roles after falling out with management  - or getting fired - on a number...

Duffel has generated a fair amount of buzz since it came on the scene in 2017.In part, this was due to a strategy to try and keep "stealthy" during its early phase of building a next-generat...

There are not too many two childhood friends who ventured into different worlds of work and then came back to form a startup in the travel industry.But Julian Stiefel and Julian Weselek of Tourlane di...

Avi Brosh was a successful real estate executive before he became passionate about hospitality.But that shift into the hotel sector was not driven by a desire to create identikit properties at the bud...

Atle Skalleberg's career so far has been a combination of being in the right place at the right time, smart decisions and perseverance.After arriving in the U.S. from Norway, he eventually took a...

It's not the most well-trodden path in online travel - a producer on the hit The Daily Show With John Stewart to CEO of a tours and activities business.But it's one that Jamie Wong took when...

The concept of upmarket hostel accommodation was, some argue, fairly alien in the youth travel sector until fairly recently.Generator Hostels was a single-property brand in London, launched in the mid...

In one respect, ToursByLocals is a classic startup story.It was the brainchild of CEO Paul Melhus and chief technology officer Dave Vincent, with them having observed how the tour guide scene was hand...

As digitalization of the airline sector has increased exponentially over the last decade, a number of new business have emerged to compete alongside the existing giants.One such brand is Flyr, based i...

The modern story of HRS (Hotel Reservation Service) is one of geographic growth, expansion into new business areas and a handing over of the baton from father to son.But the company has its roots goin...

It takes a lot to change a mindset that has prevailed for decades. Bikes (and scooters) are, for many people, mostly a thing of enjoyment.But Lime had other ideas, driven by a desire to rethink the bi...

Lastminute.com Group's name didn't start out that way.BravoFly Rumbo switched its corporate identity after an acquisition of the former European darling of the online travel world in 2015.Sp...

FlixBus is a travel startup that was created not specifically out of personal experiences of its founders but from gutsy opportunism.Daniel Krauss, Jochen Engert and André Schwämmlein realized that th...

Volantio launched into the aviation market in 2014, bidding to capitalize on a burgeoning need by airlines to embrace the digital world behind the scenes.The U.S.-based company, co-founded by Azim Bar...

Varun Khona's story about the creation of Headout is a classic startup tale.His first startup, Trippy, lasted a mere three years before he found himself with a big idea in 2014 to get in on what ...

How do you launch and grow a business that is attempting to overhaul one of the aviation sector's most complicated processes?The airline part supply chain is complex, has hundreds of customers an...

BlaBlaCar is a lot more than a carpooling platform with a quirky name.Since its creators - Frédéric Mazzella, Francis Nappez and Nicolas Brusson - thrust the brand onto the scene in the late-2000s, ma...

Brent Handler is credited by many as one of the pioneers of the "destination club" sector in the travel industry.The idea is that upmarket travelers get access to exclusive private homes or ...

Roberto Souviron, Alejandro Tamer, Martín Rastellino, Cristian Vilate and Mariano Fiori were five friends from business school who had an idea.They wanted to create Latin America's first regional...

Travis Katz launched Gogobot at the height of the "social trip planning" wave in online travel.The ex-MySpace exec knew for the company to succeed after the buzz of that 2010 period that it ...

MakeMyTrip was not one of those online travel brands that exploded onto the scene.Although it has since go on to become India's biggest OTA, Deep Kalra and his co-founders (including Rajesh Magow...

Klook has come a long way in six years. The Hong Kong-based booking site for tours and activities was one of a number of similar brands attempting to muscle in on the sector.But then came a string of ...

You can probably count on one hand the number of entertainment executives who've switched their careers to enter the world of travel startups.Rob Wiesenthal is one such entrepreneur.He left a car...

Free-spirited and never afraid to speak his mind, Bobby Healy is a well-known figure in the travel and transportation sectors.The former-gaming coder spent a few years at SITA and Amadeus before, eage...

Porter & Sail hit the sweet spot of mobile, personalization, ancillary revenue and hospitality in the mid-2010s.The company launched in 2014 with a vision to provide hotels with a service that cou...

The so-called "Brat Pack of Aviation" - under the guidance of Bob Crandall from American Airlines in the late-1980s - have all gone on to become important figures in the U.S. airline industr...

It takes a lot of effort to be recognized by the mainstream media for your skills and influence within 12 months of creating something.Or does it?A year after creating FlyerTalk, Randy Petersen was be...

The Hipmunk story is one of idea versus reality, Silicon Valley versus the status quo, big challenges and an eventual sale to an unlikely suitor.The company's co-founder, Adam Goldstein, is now c...

After a timely break of a few months after completing the first 28-stretch of episodes, How I Got Here returns for its second season.Nowadays, Rod Cuthbert is a recognizable figure on the conference c...

Operto was created in order to make life better for property managers - both those in private accommodation and others in the hotel sector.The Canada-based company is a property automation system for ...

Paul Metselaar knows a thing or two about corporate travel. He also knows how to steer his business through difficult times.Created in 1984, Ovation Travel Group remains an independently owned company...

Microsoft might be considered a very different type of large corporation from a major online travel agency such as Expedia Group.But, as most people know, travel's global web giant was created as...

NexTravel is, in many respects, a classic travel startup in that it started out with one idea and then quickly pivoted to another.The U.S.-based company, launched in 2015, as a consumer-facing leisure...

When the definitive history of online travel is written in the decades to come, Steve Hafner will be remembered for many things.It may well be for his signature and extremely direct style of commentin...

Stephan Ekbergh is known for his risk-taking (moving a business to another continent) and open views on the sector's developments and issues.The Travelstart Group is where this Swedish entreprene...

Bus travel is a huge part of the transportation ecosystem in Latin America, especially in Mexico where Reservamos was born in 2013.The business was co-founded by Sebastian Gomez, an MIT Sloan alum, wh...

Hitlist went from being an idea to help friends find air tickets when visiting its CEO in Turkey to a favorite in the app stores.Gillian Morris and her team managed to achieve the growth of the produc...