Mapping Asia’s travel tech players as they face funding storm

Before we dive in, here are some caveats about the data:

• The companies included are based in Southeast Asia, India, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
• Only those with publicly disclosed funding amounts are included in this analysis. Consequently, certain well-known entities like Agoda are not featured due to the absence of their fundraising data.

Last year concluded with a revived opportunity for travel tech firms to foster growth. After enduring a downturn during the Covid-19 pandemic, the travel and tourism industry rebounded.

Notably, Indonesian online travel platform Traveloka experienced a 75% surge in revenue and a 29% reduction in losses between 2021 and 2022.

However, travel tech startups aren’t out of the woods yet. Ongoing conflicts around the world and the current economic downturn have once again cast a shadow over the industry.

Last week, Indonesia’s Pegipegi ceased its operations after nearly 12 years in the business.

Just like other tech sectors, both the number and value of deals in the travel industry experienced a large drop due to the funding winter.

Since fundraising hit a peak in 2021, Asian travel tech startups have experienced an over 10x decline in the total funds raised in 2023. The number of deals also decreased by over 60% last year and stayed flat this year.

This mirrors the global decline. According to research conducted by GlobalData, worldwide travel and tourism funding deals contracted by 31.8% year on year in the first 10 months of 2023, with the Asia-Pacific region experiencing an 11.7% decrease over the same period.

Despite these setbacks, there is optimism. Growth in tourism spending, coupled with cross-border ecommerce, is expected to fuel the estimated US$232.4 billion in additional revenue that businesses in Southeast Asia, South Korea, and Japan will generate from 2022 to 2027.

China leading the way

Funding into the travel sector in Asia can be traced back as far as 1999 when Singapore-based Trip.com raised US$500,000 in its seed round.

After being acquired by China’s Ctrip in 2017 and going public in Hong Kong in 2021, Trip.com raked in an additional US$1.5 billion in 2022 – which is the reason why Southeast Asia saw a large jump in funding last year.

Travel tech companies hailing from China closed the most funding deals in the past few years. Since 2020, the country’s travel sector secured 52 deals, followed by India with 42 and South Korea with 26.

Big focus on OTAs