Sean O'Neill

Props to Volantio, which won the Air Pitch startup competition at Skift Global Forum last year, for now getting investment and sales support from Amadeus.

A top-tier private equity firm like General Atlantic should provide a strong tailwind for Kiwi as it branches out from selling plane tickets into other types of travel. But it's a bit surprising that Ctrip.com or another travel conglomerate didn't bite instead.

Computer vision algorithms will have a huge impact on airline and airport operations, according to Marion Mesnage, who heads up the research and innovation team at Amadeus, the travel tech giant.

Startups announcing funding this week include Mindsay, a travel chatbot maker, Interprefy, a service for providing remote interpreters for events, Airfree, a service that sells duty-free products online during flights, and Airblack, a social-travel commerce startup.

By the end of this week, Travelport is expected to leave the public markets in a $4.4 billion leveraged buyout. After months of waiting, the company can finally move on to its next steps.

The funding of French startup Mindsay may be small news. But interviews with its customers Iberia and CWT suggest that a second wave of chatbot technology has stopped frustrating travelers with as many misunderstandings as the earlier tech did. That's a big deal for the sector.

An exclusive first look at Ixigo's fiscal year financials reveals that the travel price-comparison startup is growing rapidly. Its story suggests how business models that originated in Western markets sometimes need to adapt to local needs to succeed in emerging markets.

This week travel startups announced more than $309 million in funding, as Mafengwo, Prowler.io, Instawork, Revenue Analytics, Dawex, and Outpost received investments.

Case closed. But data breaches seem never-ending.

The more Ctrip internationalizes its sources of revenue, the more it will cross swords with global players like Booking Holdings, which owns a small stake, and Expedia Group. It already claims to process more transaction volume than both of them, and a third of its revenue comes from outside mainland China.