Skift Take

The global travel industry is going through a lot of disruption, and the biggest sectors include the sharing economy and ground transportation, as well as one large potential winner in the hotel booking sector.

Yesterday, travel startups HotelTonight and GetYourGuide announced major funding rounds, and both of the travel startups are now well into double-digit millions on the amounts they’ve raised so far — HotelTonight may soon even touch $100 million mark.

That gave us an idea to compile a list of all the biggest venture-funded startups currently in travel and we came up with this list of 31 companies, with the lowest cutoff of around $20 million.

Some observations:

  • Airbnb and Uber, never really billed as travel startups per se, are the two biggest venture-backed startups that exist now across tech, not just the travel tech sector.
  • Chinese car rental, sharing, and booking companies have raised huge amounts to compete on scale.
  • Russian booking companies have raised large amounts to compete in an especially competitive market.
  • In general, room sharing and car sharing requires lot of investment to build, disrupt, and compete.
  • Only four B2B startups are on this list. Surprisingly, two are aimed at the intersection of travel transactions and advertising/retargeting.
  • Hotel booking is where the big action is on the traditional online booking transactions side.
  • On the investors side, some of the active funds on the larger sized rounds include Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Accel Partners, and Goldman Sachs.
  • In the earlier stages, Crunchfund surprisingly is the most active in this list, with Ron Conway’s SV Angel investing alongside for most part. First Round Capital pops up on that list as well.
  • Concur is the only active strategic investor in travel’s biggest startups.
  • Almost all of the big startups in travel were started in the last five years.
Rank Company Founded Headquarters Total Amount Raised Major Investors
1 Airbnb 2008 San Francisco, CA $326 Million Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, CrunchFund, Ashton Kutcher, Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Jeff Bezos, Digital Sky Technologies
2 Uber 2009 San Francisco, CA $307 MIllion TPG Growth, Google Ventures, Benchmark, Menlo Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Goldman Sachs, Benchmark, CrunchFund, Founder Collective, First Round Capital
3 eHi Car Rental 2006 Shanghai, CHN $265 Million Ctrip, Goldman Sachs, CDH Ventures, QiMing Venture Partners, Ignition Partners
4 Didi Dache 2012 Beijing, CHN $117 Million CITIC Capital Holdings, Tencent Industry Win-Win Fund
5 Kuaidadi 2012 Beijing, CHN $110 Million Alibaba
6 Foursquare 2009 New York City $106 Million DFJ Growth, Smallcap World Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, CrunchFund, SV Angel
7 Wimdu 2011 Berlin $90 Million Kinnevik, Rocket Internet
8 HotelTonight 2010 San Francisco, CA $80.7 Million + Undisclosed Coatue Management, GGV Capital, Battery Ventures, Accel Partners, US Venture Partners, First Round Capital
9 Lyft 2007 San Francisco, CA $82.5 Million Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Mayfield Fund, K9 Ventures, Floodgate, Ooga Labs
10 Hailo 2010 London $77.1 Million Union Square Ventures, KDDI, Richard Branson, Phenomen Ventures, Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, Atomico
11 Inspirato 2011 Denver, CO $65 Million American Express, DAG Ventures, Millennium, Institutional Venture Partners, Crunchfund, KPCB, Access Venture Partners
12 YongChe 2010 Beijing, CHN $60 Million Ctrip, DCM
13 HouseTrip 2010 London, UK $59.7 Million Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Balderton Capital
14 Sojern 2007 San Francisco, CA $45.7 million Triangle Peak Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, Focus Ventures, Industry Ventures.
15 Adara 2005 Mountain View, CA $44.1 Million August Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, ONSET Ventures, Thayer Ventures
16 Room77 2010 Mountain View, CA $43.8 Million Expedia, Sutter Hill Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Felicis Ventures, Concur Technologies, PAR Capital Ventures
17 Hotel Urbano 2011 Rio, Brazil $40 Million Insight Venture Partners.
18 Ostrovok 2010 Moscow, RUS $38.60 Million General Catalyst Partners, Frontier Ventures, Accel Partners, Yuri Milner
19 Wego 2005 Singapore $36 Million Tiger Global Management, Crescent Group, Square Peg Capital, News Corp
20 Siteminder 2006 Sydney, AUS $35 Million Technology Crossover Ventures, Bailador Investment Management
21 Mafengwo 2010 Beijing , CHN $35 Million QiMing Venture Partners, Capital Today
22 Travel.ru 2009 St.Petersburg, RUS $31 Million VEB Innovations, Mangrove Capital Partners, ABRT Venture Fund, Ventech
23 Switchfly 2003 San Francisco, CA $34.8 Million Thayer Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, Canaan Partners, StarVest Partners
24 8Trip 2012 Suzhou, CHN $24.6 Million Vision Knight Capital, Softbank China, Venture Capital
25 Yapta 2007 Seattle, WA $22.4 Million Concur Technologies, Amadeus, Voyager Capital, Bay Partners, First Round Capital
26 Hopper 2007 Montreal, CAN $21.7 Million Brightspark Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Atlas Venture
27 Zozi 2007 San Francisco, CA $21.3 Million Pritzker/Vlock Family Office, LaunchCapital, 500 Startups, Forerunner Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, PAR Capital Ventures
28 GetYourGuide 2009 Zurich, Switzerland $20.5 Million Sunstone Capital, Spark Capital, PROfounders Capital, Highland Capital Partners
29 Hipmunk 2010 San Francisco, CA $20.2 Million Institutional Venture Partners, Ignition Partners, Webb Investment Network
30 Viator 1995 San Francisco, CA $20 Million Carlyle Venture Partners, Technology Venture Partners
31 Gogobot 2010 San Francisco, CA $19 Million Redpoint Ventures, Battery Ventures, CrunchFund, Innovation Endeavors
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Tags: adara, airbnb, foursquare, getyourguide, gogobot, hailo, hipmunk, hopper, hotel urbano, hoteltonight, housetrip, inspirato, lyft, ostrovok, room 77, sojern, uber, viator, wego, wimdu, yapta, zozi

Photo credit: Airbnb is the most heavily funded travel startup of all.

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