2015 › November

These are the newest travel startups from AngelList vying for travelers’ interest and investors’ attention.

While the big chains have tech and marketing people to optimize websites and their cost-per click campaigns, booking sites in transformation such as Booking.com, Trivago and TripAdvisor are squarely directed at making themselves more essential to smaller, independent hotels. It is another sign of the changing role of metasearch sites and online travel agencies in the mobile era.

Hospitality solutions is a significant yet still relatively small portion of Sabre's business but it will trend upwards in coming years with acquisitions such as the one for Trust International. The travel agent business is still where Sabre makes 70 percent of its dough.

At last, a U.S. tourism bureau has developed its digital meetings content and user interface on par with the best leisure content/UI available out there.

Some of these videos aren't particularly exciting let alone visually stunning, but they still highlight which subjects and stories travelers feel most drawn to and offer lessons for what kind of content best facilitates connection.

Don't call it a comeback. Travel agents never disappeared; the savvy agents just got serious by re-branding themselves as travel consultants and learning to specialize in what technology companies can't provide: a human touch.

These are the newest travel startups from AngelList vying for travelers’ interest and investors’ attention.

Middle America isn't sexy, but it's an enormous part of the travel sector and one in which there are multiple opportunities to innovate.