The last 18 months may be considered a write-off when it comes to comparative analysis of the travel startup landscape.
Companies of all shapes, sizes and ages have faced enormous challenges as their markets have disappeared overnight and any return to some sense of business as usual has been lukewarm at best for many.
In 2020, Phocuswright‘s annual State of Startups Report, which has tracked the digital travel startup landscape since 2009, expected about half the amount of funding to come the way of startups during the year when compared to 2019.
Pre-pandemic 2019 saw $7.4 billion of investment go into travel startups.
Travel funding may have hit a low in 2020 but there were some signs of a recovery emerging in early 2021, with a string of big checks being the sent the way of Travelperk, Getaway, EasyMile, GoSharing and Momenta, among others.
But the sad reality is that travel startups, during any period of time, without a global pandemic to…