This is the state of travel funding in 2023

Phocuswright has tracked the digital travel startup landscape for around 15 years, and as of the time of publishing this report there are over 4,600 companies in our Travel Startups Interactive Database (available to Phocuswright research subscribers). All of the data in this report, and more, is accessible in the online database. 

During the past decade and a half, from the Great Recession to the rise of mobile devices, social media and the sharing economy, then through the COVID-19 pandemic, travel companies have felt the heights of funding frenzies and the depths of disappearing demand. 

The industry experienced a funding boom during the low interest rate environment of 2021, particularly for companies that could demonstrate resilience and relevance during the COVID crisis. But for multiple reasons, foremost being the rapid rise of interest rates, investment activity has dried up rapidly over the past two years.  

Leveraging data from Phocuswright’s proprietary database of companies as well as desk research and interviews, The State of Travel Funding report presents a broad look at funding to travel companies in today’s challenging environment. 

This article is a preview of Phocuswright's full report The State of Travel Funding 2023.
Get the full report here.

The State of Travel Funding 2023 includes the following sections:

• Introduction
• Funding Analysis
• Regional Analysis
• Investor Analysis
• Business Focus Analysis
• Vertical Analysis
• Horizontal Analysis
• Interest-ing Times for Travel Companies

Methodology
This report features analysis of travel companies founded at any time in the past three decades, but primarily focuses on funding rounds raised by these companies in the past decade – specifically between the beginning of 2013 and the first half of 2023 (1H23). 

Changes to the Methodology: 
*Previous iterations of this report, titled The State of Travel Startups, analyzed startups founded within a certain date range (e.g., the past five or 10 years). This year, given the challenging funding environment, and the fact that well-established companies have been among the main entities raising money, we expanded the date range to include companies founded at any time in the past three decades. Consequently, we renamed the report as The State of Travel Funding.  

In order to avoid skewing the analysis, companies which have raised over $4 billion or only operate tangentially in travel (specifically, autonomous vehicle companies) were excluded from the dataset unless otherwise specified. This equates to 32 companies (e.g., Uber, Didi, Airbnb) that have raised $116.2 billion being excluded from the analyzed dataset. 

**Funding includes publicly disclosed amounts of venture capital, private equity, crowdfunding, debt and other types of traditional funding rounds. Dollar amounts associated with IPOs, post-IPO investments, acquisitions and mergers were excluded from the analyzed dataset.