Qantas Loyalty announced a partnership with Expedia Group on 30 September 2026, under which Expedia Group B2B will run the booking platforms behind Qantas Hotels & Holidays and Jetstar Holidays. Expedia B2B will power the end-to-end booking experience, built on its Composable Agentic Template.

Customers will book hotels and holiday packages, earn and redeem Qantas Points and manage the whole trip in one place. The airline’s loyalty arm keeps the customer relationship and the points currency. Expedia supplies the technology underneath.

What Expedia adds to Qantas Hotels & Holidays

Four features are planned: deeper integration with the Qantas App, better digital self-service, machine-learning recommendations for properties and holidays, and bundles that pair a holiday with premium cabin seats and codeshare partner flights.

The upgraded platform is due in the first half of 2027. KarryOn reported that build and integration work is already under way, which puts the launch roughly six to nine months out.

What each side said

“Partnering with Expedia Group gives us access to world-class travel technology that will transform how our customers search, book, and manage their trips,” said Jayne Davey, Qantas Loyalty Executive Manager, Business to Consumer, as Travel Weekly reported.

Carolina Cabero, SVP Sales at Expedia Group B2B, put the pitch in terms of plumbing. “By connecting supply, pricing, payments, loyalty and smarter digital experiences through one integrated platform, we’re giving Qantas the flexibility to innovate faster,” she said.

Alfonso Paredes, Expedia’s President of B2B, gave Travel Distribution News the shorter version: “AI is the interface. Expedia B2B is the infrastructure.”

Second Australian white-label travel booking in a fortnight

The Qantas deal follows a similar move by two weeks. On 17 September 2026, Expedia Group B2B launched NAB Travel inside National Australia Bank’s app, its first arrangement of this kind with an Australian bank.

Expedia’s 2025 Traveller Value Index found that 72% of Australians would book travel through a non-travel loyalty programme if they could earn points. A bank and a flag carrier are now both acting on that number, and both are using the same supplier to do it.

The week’s other deals

• Marriott and IOI Properties Group: signed four new-build hotels in Malaysia with 888 rooms in total: W Langkawi, The Ritz-Carlton Putrajaya, Aloft Sepang and Aloft Johor Bahru Plentong, according to TTG Asia.
• Harilela Group and IHG: The Hari Hong Kong, with 210 rooms, joined IHG’s Vignette Collection. The agreement also covers The Hari London and a forthcoming The Hari Singapore, TTG Asia reported.

What it means for hotels, airlines and OTAs

For airlines, the Qantas structure is a clear answer to the build-or-rent question on non-air content. The carrier does not run its own hotel and holiday engine. It rents one, and holds on to the two things that carry value in a loyalty business: who the customer is and what the points are worth.

For banks and other points issuers, NAB Travel and Qantas Hotels & Holidays show the same supplier serving different front doors. A white-label stack lets a brand with a large member base add travel without building supply, pricing and payments from scratch.

For hotels, more demand will arrive through branded loyalty storefronts rather than through the OTA’s own app. Rate parity, content quality and points-redemption terms will matter in more places, and the supply sits behind one supplier’s connection.

For OTAs, the competitive set now includes the OTA’s own B2B arm selling to their customers’ loyalty programmes. Expedia is positioning itself as infrastructure as well as a consumer brand.

Who to watch

Travel Tech Asia and ITB Asia run from 21 to 23 October in Singapore. Airline and loyalty heads in the region are likely to ask the same questions Qantas has just answered. Cabero and Paredes are the Expedia B2B executives to follow on how the Qantas and NAB builds progress, and what a white-label arrangement looks like for APAC carriers and banks.

Key takeaway

Qantas has shown that a top carrier can rent the booking technology and still own the customer and the points. We read that as the model other loyalty owners in APAC will be asked to copy. Any airline, bank or hotel group with a points programme should, this quarter, list which parts of its non-air booking stack it must own and which it could rent, and price both options.

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Eight travel startups take the stage at WiT Singapore 2026 this week in the Global Startup Pitch, picked from 17 finalists who pitched at Phocuswright Europe in Barcelona in June 2026. The competition is jointly produced by WiT, Phocuswright and PhocusWire, and it is in its fifth year.

For a reader deciding whether to make the trip, the pitch is the part of the event that shows where young travel companies are pointing their products. Eight companies survived a cut from 17, so the audience sees a filtered list rather than an open call.

Two categories, two stages of company

The pitch splits entrants by age and funding. Seedup is for startups under three years old that have raised US$5M or less. Scaleup is for companies three to eight years old that have raised US$10M or less.

The split tells a buyer what kind of conversation to expect. A Seedup company has a short history and a small funding total, so its pitch is about promise. A Scaleup company has three to eight years behind it, so its pitch can point to customers already signed. A hotel, airline or OTA leader can decide before the first slide which of the two it came to meet.

Sponsor and prizes

American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) sponsors the competition. The prizes include travel to the event itself: SPUN received the AirAsia MOVE award, which includes a return flight from anywhere in Asia to WiT Singapore. A prize that pays for a founder’s seat at the show fits a contest whose purpose is to put startups in front of buyers.

Where the winners go next: Phocuswright in Fort Lauderdale

Singapore is not the end of the road. People’s Choice winners go on to The Phocuswright Conference, 17 to 19 November, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The route runs from Barcelona in June to Singapore this week to Florida in November, across three continents. For a founder, that means three different audiences testing the same product. For a buyer, it is a way to watch the same companies get questioned in more than one room.

A Wildcard route into Singapore

One entrant arrived by an unusual door. Hotel-Online reported that OneJourney advances to WiT Singapore following a Wildcard win at the Global Startup Pitch competition. The same report says OneJourney has been in commercial use since early 2026, is live with operators in Europe, and is available to more than 1,100 luxury independent hotels through the DayBlink GPO partnership.

Brian Dass said in the Hotel-Online report: “The next frontier for hospitality innovation is in financial operations.” The frontier he names is the back office, not the guest-facing side of the hotel. The distribution figure gives the claim weight: more than 1,100 hotels can reach the product through a single partnership.

What WiT Singapore 2026 is about

The event is focused on generative AI, startups and travel technology, according to TravelDailyNews Asia. The startup pitch sits inside that frame, so buyers who come for the AI sessions can also see the young companies building for the same problems at the same event.

For organisers

The Global Startup Pitch is a format other organisers can study. It uses two tiers with hard limits on age and money, so entrants compete against their peers. It has a headline sponsor in Amex GBT. Its prizes carry travel, as the AirAsia MOVE award does. It feeds winners into a larger event, and a Wildcard route lets a company that missed out in one city come back in another. A tiered pitch also needs people who can judge the entries and moderate the stage, and regional events that run startup programmes of their own will find the same need.

Key takeaway

We would make the trip if your job is to find a supplier before your competitors do. Eight companies from 17 finalists is a short list worth reading, and the Seedup and Scaleup labels tell you which pitches to sit through. If you can attend only one session, make it the pitch itself, and watch the People’s Choice result, since those winners head to Fort Lauderdale on 17 to 19 November.

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Ellerston Capital, led by Ashok Jacob, is set to buy the Leibovichs’ stake of about 12% in Luxury Escapes. The secondary sale values Adam Schwab’s travel booking platform at $525 million, as the Financial Review reported on 24 September 2026.

Ellerston is targeting a shareholding of at least 12% and gets one board seat. Because this is a secondary sale, the money goes to the selling shareholders and not to Luxury Escapes. Ellerston expects to more than double its money and to earn a 5 per cent dividend yield before it exits in two to three years.

What Luxury Escapes does

Adam Schwab founded Luxury Escapes in 2013 and is its CEO. The company is headquartered in Melbourne, has offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore, and has more than 9 million members. It sells limited-time hotel offers, cruise and tour products to consumers and, increasingly, to travel agents.

The company took its first external equity in late 2021 and early 2022, when Pier 12 Capital raised a $125 million fund to buy a stake in Lux Group. Ellerston’s purchase comes about four years after that first outside investment.

Its traction numbers are specific. One in two Australians travelling to the Maldives books through Luxury Escapes. Its store in Chatswood, Sydney, was tracking toward about $100 million in annual sales. The company also runs a Melbourne to Maldives charter at its own risk. “We’re on risk, so if we don’t sell out, it’s on us,” Schwab said.

The Luxury Escapes Agent Hub

Luxury Escapes launched its Agent Hub in March 2024. The hub now runs in Australia and the UK, and thousands of agents use it for commissionable rates on limited-time offers, cruise and tour products.

Adam Schwab, founder and CEO of Luxury Escapes, told Travel Weekly Australia in February 2026 that the hub “could be a billion-dollar business for us in the next couple of years”. He added: “We now sell to agents and it’s one of our fastest-growing parts of the business.”

On growth, he puts margin first: “It’s easy to grow top line if you spend a lot on marketing. What we focus on is growing contribution margin.”

Other recent deals

• Fever raised US$250 million in primary equity on 17 September. EQT led the round, with Point72 Private Investments and Baillie Gifford. Fever’s own announcement calls it the largest round ever for a live-entertainment tech company. Fever operates in more than 55 countries, has tripled its revenue over three years and reports positive EBITDA.
• Laters.com, based in Singapore, closed a US$1.5 million seed round led by XBO Ventures and rebranded on 8 September.

What operators should read into it

Ellerston’s terms value Luxury Escapes on cash returns and a set exit: a 5 per cent dividend yield, more than double the money, and out in two to three years. That return case rests on distributions and not on growth alone, and it matches Schwab’s stated focus on contribution margin. Fever’s round points the same way. The company led its announcement with positive EBITDA as well as its growth figures.

For hotels, cruise lines and DMCs selling into Australia, Luxury Escapes now reaches buyers three ways: its members online, its physical stores such as Chatswood, and agents through the Agent Hub. It also carries inventory risk on its own Maldives charter. The Maldives figure matters most to suppliers, because one platform handles half of Australian travellers to that destination. With a new investor on the board that expects a dividend, the platform’s margin per booking will face closer scrutiny.

Key takeaway

Investors in APAC travel are paying for margin and cash returns, and Luxury Escapes at $525 million is a clear price point for a platform that sells to consumers, in stores and through agents. This quarter, a hotel, cruise line or DMC selling into Australia should check how much of its business moves through Luxury Escapes’ members, stores and Agent Hub, and what that channel costs compared with direct bookings. We expect the conversation about the capital behind these channels to continue at ITB Asia and HICAP in Singapore, 20 to 23 October.

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SPUN, the Indonesian visa startup, runs its application flow inside the checkouts of Klook, Traveloka, Tiket and Nusatrip, and reports a 99% approval rate on the visa applications it files. The company was founded by Christa Sabathaly, its chief executive, and Dilla Anindita, two former colleagues from LINE Indonesia.

In January the company closed a USD 1.8 million seed funding round led by Genesia Ventures, as TNGlobal reported the round. The money is for expanding the product across Southeast Asia.

How it started

Sabathaly and Anindita met at LINE Indonesia. Before that, Sabathaly worked at Google, and Anindita was a product lead at Grab and Cookpad. All three are consumer products where a slow form is a lost user, and that is the background the two brought to visas.

The visa is the one step of a trip that stayed manual. A traveller in Southeast Asia can book a flight, a hotel and an airport transfer in one session on an OTA. The visa still meant a separate form, a separate agent and a separate wait, with rules that change by passport, destination and purpose. Agung Hadinegoro, Partner at Antler Indonesia, put the size of it in one line: “visa friction is not an Indonesia-only problem”.

How OTA visa integration works

SPUN supports more than 300 visa types across more than 90 countries. Its visa flow is embedded in Klook, Traveloka, Tiket and Nusatrip, so the traveller stays inside the OTA’s own checkout and SPUN handles the application behind the page. The OTA offers the visa. SPUN does the work.

The company calls the product AI-enabled visa infrastructure. Takahiro Suzuki, General Partner at Genesia Ventures, said SPUN “is building the intelligence and workflow layer that helps standardize visa processes across Southeast Asia”. The word that matters is layer. SPUN is not a visa agency with a website. It is the workflow underneath other companies’ websites.

The business

SPUN reports a 99% visa application approval rate and more than 200 corporate customers, alongside the four OTA integrations. That gives it two channels: travellers who buy a visa at an OTA checkout, and companies that send staff across borders and want every application handled the same way.

Genesia Ventures led the seed round. Antler, Spiral Ventures, Iterative and Kopital Ventures joined, with Kum Hong Siew, the former Managing Director of Airbnb China, as an angel investor. Sabathaly said the company is “creating infrastructure that can scale regionally while delivering reliability for both individual travelers and travel partners”. Partners is the word for the OTAs and the corporates. SPUN’s customer is as often a platform as a person.

The next twelve months

The seed round is for taking the product across Southeast Asia, and the investor quotes point the same way: Suzuki on standardising visa processes across the region, Hadinegoro on a problem that is not Indonesia-only. The measures to watch are the OTA list beyond the four names and the corporate count beyond 200.

The nearer date is WiT Singapore. SPUN received the AirAsia MOVE award in the 2026 Global Startup Pitch, a return flight from anywhere in Asia to WiT Singapore, which puts the founders in the same room as the region’s OTAs, airlines and investors.

Who to watch. Organisers building panels on distribution in Southeast Asia have a candidate here: two founders from LINE, Google, Grab and Cookpad whose product sits inside four OTA checkouts and more than 200 corporate accounts. Founders who sell infrastructure to the platforms, rather than compete with them, bring a different conversation to a stage than another OTA keynote.

Key takeaway

SPUN shows that an OTA does not have to build the visa step to own it. Rent the layer, keep the customer inside your checkout, and let a specialist carry the rules for 300 visa types across 90 countries. Founders can copy the shape of the deal: pick the one manual step left in a booking flow, build the workflow underneath it, and sell it to the platforms rather than against them. We will be watching the OTA list and the corporate count over the next year.

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dormakaba, the Swiss lock and access group, announced a binding agreement on 15 September 2026 for the acquisition of Alliants Limited, the Southampton, United Kingdom guest-experience software company whose platform covers more than 100,000 hotel rooms. Financial terms were not disclosed, by mutual agreement. The transaction is expected to close within 2026, once regulatory approval is in.

Alliants was founded in 2009 and has more than 100 employees. Its software spans concierge, contactless check-in, mobile key, payments, messaging and agentic AI, the layer a guest touches from arrival to checkout. TIME magazine named the company’s digital hotel key among the best inventions of 2025. On its own site, Alliants claims 15 years of operation, more than 100,000 rooms on the platform, a 94% increase in ancillary revenue and an 11% increase in guest satisfaction for its customers.

dormakaba reported revenue of CHF 2.79 billion and adjusted EBITDA of CHF 449 million, a 16.1% margin, for the year through June 2026, Skift reported on Thursday. Skift lists Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Resorts World Las Vegas and Premier Inn among Alliants’ customers, and notes that a Premier Inn and Hub SaaS rollout covering more than 95,000 rooms is not yet reflected in Alliants’ 2025 accounts. The room count under contract runs ahead of the revenue in the books, which is the usual shape of a capability purchase rather than a revenue purchase.

Alliants’ published success stories name Resorts World Las Vegas, Four Seasons, Nobu Hospitality, Bvlgari Hotels & Resorts, Accor Group, Muir, Grosvenor House Suites, The Alpina Gstaad, Lore Group and Avis. Four of those names, Four Seasons, Accor, Nobu and Bvlgari, run portfolios across Asia Pacific, which gives a Southampton company and a Swiss buyer a direct line into the region’s luxury and upscale hotels.

“Hotel owners and operators increasingly view access and guest experience as part of the same strategy,” said Till Reuter, CEO of dormakaba. The logic of the purchase sits in that sentence. The lock on the door, the mobile key that opens it, the message that tells the guest the room is ready and the payment that settles the bill move under one owner.

The deal lands in a segment that has been drawing capital. Abode Worldwide’s Hospitality Tech Investment Index 2026, reported by Hotel Dive, covers the year from April 2025 to March 2026:

• More than $1 billion raised across 40 hospitality technology companies.
• Seven property management systems took $408.1 million of that total.
• Mews alone raised $300 million.

For a hotel owner or operator, the change is in who sits across the table at renewal. Access hardware has been bought as a capital item with a long life. Guest messaging, mobile check-in and payments have been bought as subscriptions, often from three or four separate vendors. dormakaba’s purchase puts the lock and the guest software in one company, and the sale of the lock becomes the opening for the sale of everything behind it. Owners with Alliants in their stack will want the post-closing roadmap in writing. Owners with dormakaba locks and another vendor’s messaging or key app should expect a bundled offer at the next renewal.

For airlines and OTAs the read is narrower. The guest’s phone is becoming the hotel’s own channel for key, messaging and payment, and that is the same screen their apps compete for.

Key takeaway

The signal is that hotel access is now sold as software, with the lock as the entry point for a bundle of mobile key, messaging and payments from one vendor. That moves pricing power towards the vendor and takes integration work off the operator, and both effects arrive at the next contract. This quarter, list every guest-facing system with its renewal date and ask each vendor, dormakaba included, what the bundle costs against the sum of its parts. We will be watching who else buys into the guest layer before year end.

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Seek Sophie, the Singapore experiences marketplace, listed its first China supply on 14 September 2026: 25 community-led experiences, all in Yunnan province. The listing came after roughly a year of sustained requests from its community and three multi-week scouting trips to the province, TTG Asia reported. Nothing went live until the team had walked the routes itself.

That sequence is the company’s method, not a one-off. Seek Sophie describes itself on its own site as “a marketplace, but a highly curated one”, with the founders going on the ground to test experiences and screening each one for its benefit to local communities and wildlife. The team, the site says, is “scattered across Asia”.

How it started

Co-founder and CEO Jacinta Lim was previously an executive manager at the insurtech MicroEnsure. Co-founder Lina Gedvilaite was an investment analyst at the International Finance Corporation in Ukraine. The two met during an MBA in 2016 and, as Vulcan Post reported, launched the platform with about 260 listings across Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia. Every listing had been personally tested by the founders, who spent at least two months in each country sourcing supply before the platform opened.

What the Yunnan set looks like

The 25 experiences are built around local hosts rather than a coach itinerary. There is a Tiger Leaping Gorge route led by Naxi guide Nong Bu, a Yunnan speciality coffee experience, and a three-day, two-night Tea Horse Road caravan in Shangri-La with Tibetan guides and glamping. The wildlife tracking is run by former hunters who now work as forest rangers protecting the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey.

Lim frames the curation as a position on capacity rather than a marketing line. “For us, preventing overtourism is really about shaping tourism before a place gets overwhelmed,” she told TTG Asia. A year of demand, three scouting trips and 25 listings is a slow pace by marketplace standards. The company lists what its founders have tested, not what a supplier uploads.

The MICE corporate line

The consumer marketplace is not the only revenue line. Seek Sophie’s corporate business already serves Meta, Google, Disney and ByteDance, and the company is now pushing into international corporate events, TTGmice reported in July. Inbound corporate groups are estimated at 10 to 20 per cent of its overall corporate business.

Lim’s pitch to planners is direct. “Singapore only feels boring if you experience it in the usual corporate way: convention centre, mall, hotel restaurant,” she said. The heritage-led formats the company runs for consumers are being packaged for teams and incentive groups, which gives the curation work a second buyer.

The next twelve months

China is the expansion market. Lim named Sichuan, Chongqing and Xinjiang as the next markets after Yunnan, and the company’s record points to the same treatment for each: sustained demand from the community first, multiple scouting trips second, listings last. On the corporate side, the push into international events puts Seek Sophie in front of the MICE buyers who bring groups into Singapore and increasingly want the same curation when the group travels out.

Travel founders with a story of their own can share it with TravHQ through the site’s contact page.

Key takeaway

Volume marketplaces compete on listing count, and Seek Sophie is betting on the opposite. Its China entry shows what that bet costs: a year of waiting and three scouting trips for 25 listings. For OTAs and DMCs, the lesson is that curated supply in a new market is a scouting budget before it is a catalogue, and for tourism boards in Sichuan, Chongqing and Xinjiang, a curator that screens for community benefit is worth courting before the coaches arrive. We would watch the corporate line most closely, because it is the part of the business that turns curation into repeat orders.

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Uber has led a US$10 million Series B into Carrum Mobility, its largest Uber Black fleet partner in India, at a post-money valuation of INR 16 billion, about US$168 million, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday. It is the second time Uber has written a cheque to the company. In January 2026 it put in US$7 million at a post-money valuation of INR 6 billion, about US$63 million. The valuation has risen from INR 6 billion to INR 16 billion since January, and Uber’s stake now stands at a mid-teens percentage.

Karan Jain founded Carrum in 2024. A former McKinsey consultant, Jain previously built Revv, which CarDekho bought in 2023, and CarDekho is an investor in Carrum as well. Carrum runs about 5,100 cars today and wants to be at roughly 11,000 within a year. More than 18,000 drivers have joined the platform in six cities so far: Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Kolkata. Chennai is next on the list.

Revenue for the year to March 2026 came in at INR 2.33 billion, about US$24.5 million, nearly four times the INR 620 million of the year before, and the company closed the year with a net profit of INR 70 million. Its borrowing costs fell by about 40% over the same period. Carrum now puts its annualised revenue run rate at INR 400 crore and says it has made money every month since it opened, Entrepreneur India reported. The same report sizes the round at about INR 96 crore.

Carrum’s cars are split by Uber product. About 70% are hatchbacks on Uber Go, 10% are sedans on Uber Premier and 20% are SUVs, most of them on Uber Black, which is what makes the company Uber’s largest Black fleet partner in India. The relationship is not exclusive on paper. Jain told TechCrunch that Carrum has no plans at present to put its cars on rival platforms.

Jain said the new money would pay for entry into more cities, further work on Carrum’s technology and continued investment in the premium end of the service. Aditya Kapoor, director of supply at Uber India and South Asia, said Carrum had run a tight and disciplined operation, and that the investment would add better cars to Uber’s platform and support its premium tier.

Travel startup funding: the week’s other deals

Carrum’s round arrived in a strong week for Indian venture funding. Startups in the country pulled in US$321.9 million across 20 deals in the week to 11 September, an 82.4% jump on the US$176.5 million of the week before, according to Inc42’s weekly count. Carrum was the only travel-tech name on that list. Two other travel deals crossed the desk this week:

• Golden Horizon, the 300-guest sailing cruise ship built by the Brodosplit yard in Croatia, has found a buyer. A Swiss shipping company with a fleet of about 100 vessels has agreed to pay EUR 110 million for the ship, Travel And Tour World reported this month, citing Croatian press. The contract keeps the buyer’s name private.
• In China, CSTS Enterprises and ShanKai Sports have formed CSTS Hospitality, a joint venture aimed at premium sports hospitality, VIP travel and corporate hosting across China and the rest of Asia, according to Travel Daily News Asia.

Three facts from the Carrum deal matter to anyone buying ground transport in India. Uber now owns a mid-teens stake in the fleet that carries its premium passengers in six cities. That fleet intends to more than double within a year. And its founder has said it will not supply Uber’s rivals for now.

Key takeaway

Ground transport supply in India is being bought, not just contracted, and the platform that sells the ride now part-owns the cars. Hotels, airlines and OTAs selling airport transfers and chauffeur products in India should expect premium car supply and its pricing to be set increasingly by the platform rather than by the fleet. We would lock in transfer rates and capacity for the coming peak season now, and line up a second supplier in each city before Carrum reaches 11,000 vehicles.

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Renowned company – and rightly so for being the world’s largest women’s media brand – Cosmopolitan has expanded into the travel business. Cosmopolitan is one of the most powerful and recognized brands in the world. It’s the biggest young women’s magazine media brand in the UK and has now decided to penetrate into the travel industry with its travel booking service CosmoTrips. 

“Travel like an editor” is the catchphrase that CosmoTrips is riding on. Open to travellers in the U.S, this venture of Cosmopolitan delivers a unique opportunity for the brand’s Gen Z and millennial audience to “travel like an editor” through instantly bookable, curated vacation experiences in top cities across the U.S. Currently the offering features an assortment of two and three-day itineraries in New York, Austin, Charleston, and West Hollywood. It will soon expand to curating itineraries for New Orleans, Miami, and Las Vegas in the coming months.

After more than 2 years of stillness, the travel industry has returned to the advertising market with a bang. Over the past year, Cosmo has invested in travel coverage, delivering more content than ever, including travel features in every print issue. With the launch of CosmoTrips, Cosmopolitan is dedicating its 5th issue to travel enthusiasts. This issue will be exploring the hottest places to travel right now, the best places to stay, where to dine, what to wear, and things to check out while you’re there. The issue will also include a unique CosmoTrips feature spotlighting the four launch destinations.

Inside the CosmoTrips itineraries

Each itinerary offers the best places to stay, eat, and play—plus exclusive perks and insider access—all vetted by the Cosmo editorial team and secured in collaboration with experience provider Travel Curious.

“CosmoTrips travel packages are specifically curated for this demographic, vetted by our editors, and include perks and surprise and delight moments, many of which are exclusive to our offering. Cosmo is such a trusted resource on so many aspects of their lives; creating a travel experience they will love, making it easy to book, and guaranteeing them a fun time was a natural brand extension for us”, says Nancy Berger – Publishing Director and Chief Revenue Officer of Hearst Youth + Wellness Group.

“Our editors love to travel—and so does our audience. CosmoTrips not only takes out the stress of planning their next vacation but travelers are guaranteed an experience that passes our editors’ pickiness test, all without lifting a finger,” said Jessica Giles, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan. “With the coolest destinations, chicest restaurants, and the secret spots only locals know about, these are the extremely curated trips that our audience deserves.”

Travel now, pay later!

The heightened focus on travel has also unlocked new advertising partnerships with tourism agencies, hotels, and other mainstays of the hospitality industry, including Air New Zealand and Texas Tourism. Launch sponsors for CosmoTrips include Bloomingdale’s and Klarna. Klarna serves as the official “travel now, pay later” partner, making it easy for consumers to budget their travel plans. The payment platform is fully integrated into the CosmoTrips booking website, and CosmoTrips will be featured in a variety of premium placement formats across Klarna’s app and website as well as promoted through Klarna’s influencer network.

Booking an experience with CosmoTrips?

If you’re interested in a sample itinerary, Cosmo put together a review of what you would be seeing and doing in New York City. You can book your trip right at CosmoTrips’s website, and two-night stays start at $349 per person, with double occupancy. Three-nighters are as low as $449 per person and require three people to book.

It is interesting that Cosmopolitan, a magazine known for its articles like “What zodiac sign are you most compatible with” and “How to make your man crazy about you” has ventured into a very very new space and created CosmoTrips. What CosmoTrips offers is not your typical tour but, for somebody who is looking for inexpensive lodging and a bit of guidance in terms of what to do, it could turn out to be perfect.

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Tourplus Technology Sdn Bhd (Tourplus), a Malaysian travel startup that provides an online marketplace for travelers providing personalised itineraries linking travelers to local guides today announced that it had raised an investment of US$1 million (RM4.1 million). The parties in the syndicated investment took the lead from Jin Hui Wong, a Malaysian based business angel, together with a Malaysian corporation GT-MAX, followed by SOSV and its accelerator Chinaccelerator and a few other undisclosed investors.

2020 was meant to be the Malaysia Visit Year and would have boosted Malaysia’s tourism sector instead it ended with the worst crisis of the tourism industry Malaysia has ever faced with RM45 billion in losses reported in June. Being in the industry and affected, Tourplus took on this time to work on their product expansion on their platform, work on raising the numbers of registered tour guides and strategise on marketing efforts. Bullish on moving forward, Rickson Goh the CEO & Founder is steadfast in steering the company to a positive positioning with the investment injected to the company.

Also read, Tourplus raises US$400k to enter China tourism market.

“It has been a challenging year but an exciting one at the same time as we work towards a product expansion with the aim to be the ‘Tripadvisor’ or ‘Dianping’ based in SEA, strategise on strengthening our social media presence with a strong marketing push and talent acquisition to accommodate our expansion plans,” Rickson said.

Rickson also stated that 40% of the investment portion is allocated towards the product platform expansion and refining their technology solution, 30% towards marketing effort in their bid to expand market base by securing clients and establishing their brand across the region and 30% of the funds allocated towards building the manpower strength. Founded in 2015, the startup pivoted to a more market friendly mobile app in 2018 with a tour guide focused app targeting 300% of revenue increase, at the time. To date, Tourplus has managed to build strength of 3,000+ registered tour guides all over Malaysia and SEA with a hit of 10,000 users within the 2019-2020 time frame. Tourplus provides certified driver guides and customisable itineraries that are reviewed by other travelers around the world.

As the lead investor, Jin Hui Wong said that ”We are optimistic with the development that Tourplus is showcasing. Although the travel related business has been heavily affected at the moment, we think the post-pandemic situation will be like China where the domestic tourism rebound over the Golden Week holiday. We are encouraged by the team’s tenacity and the positive outlook of the South East Asia tourism market in the near future which we believe will rebound as well. ”

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In a truly digital ecosystem, many organizations are working with remote employees and engaging with contractors who are working across time-zones. An off-shoot of this model, is what a Pune based startup Trawork is focussing on!  Trawork helps you to take a customised trip for you and your friends, family and colleagues making the workation a very productive activity!

Vandita Purohit, Co-Founder at TravWork shares with us her story about her start-up TraWork!

I have been a travel buff since the time I understood ‘travelling’. And I never gave it up through the course of life- be it schooling, graduation, or a new job, getting married, owning businesses, or even motherhood. I was always working while I adorned all these roles one after the other. And I can proudly say that I am a workaholic and a travelholic. And while I was doing all of this back and forth I observed that a lot of people fear to lose the work-life balance while they are on a tour. With this thought in mind, I began researching and surveying about people and their travel preferences etc. And came up with a solution; that helps people travel and never lose out on any work or business at the same time; and called it TRAWORK= TRAVEL+ WORK. Trawork is especially for those who love their work/job and travelling as well.

What does a trip with Trawork entail?

A trip with Trawork will allow people to go on a ‘WORKATION’ and visit places you have always wanted to visit. Now a lot of you might think- ‘Who works on a Holiday ?’ It’s because in reality we never stop worrying about work even if we are on a vacation. We design our trips in a way that it benefits your business/ work in every possible way- it could be attending a conference, seminar, understanding other work cultures or even a business expo. The days are dedicated to working while the evening for exploring the vicinities, parties and fun activities. We urge people to take these trips as meeting people from different locations really broadens your perspective in ways that you might not be aware of. A typical trip with Trawork offers you the best of both worlds- work and vacation. And hey! Wouldn’t you all come back even happier from a trip if you didn’t miss out any work and did some business also?

About our trips and traction

Our trips are designed for people who fall in the age group of 18 to 42 years old and are working professionals, freelancers, entrepreneurs, artists, digital nomads, and everybody who is fond of both travelling and their profession. We are now a community of 4000+ traveller enthusiasts. We have successfully completed 7 international trips and we are running POC’s with 4-day India and our industry-focussed trips.

Our immediate plans

Include organizing 4-day India trips from six different hubs and 10-day trips in the India-circuit. In addition, we are looking at 10 -30 days international workations. This year we would be organising a workation to India for our foreign audience which will bring a lot of tourism in India.

The post TraWork wants you to work from anywhere, travel to everywhere appeared first on TravHQ.