We’re officially opening the call for startups: the FutureTravel Pitch Competition is back.

On October 29th, Barcelona will once again host the FutureTravel Summit: a global gathering of travel innovators, startup founders, corporate executives, and investors. Set in one of Europe’s most iconic travel hubs, the summit brings together forward-thinking minds shaping what’s next in travel and hospitality.

The Pitch Competition is always a highlight of the event. It’s a launchpad for early-stage travel startups looking to gain traction, visibility, and strategic connections.

The Criteria

This year’s competition will see 10 early-stage startups that are:

• Travel, tourism & hospitality startups
• At pre-seed or seed stage
• Founded within the last 3 years

If that sounds like you, apply through our application form. Applications close on July 20th.

The Prize Package

You’ll pitch live in front of a top-tier jury of investors and industry leaders. You have direct access to people who write checks and open doors in travel tech. You’ll get featured in FutureTravel’s newsletter and gain visibility across our channels and partner network.

On top of that:

• $100,000 in Cloudflare credits, including a dedicated account manager and technical sessions with Cloudflare experts to optimize your infrastructure.
• 90% discount on HubSpot‘s AI-powered and connected CRM (valued at $17,000 USD) to scale sales, marketing, and customer operations.
• 6 months free of Notion Business, including Notion AI (valued at up to $12,000) — roadmaps, projects, fundraising, hiring, all in one place with AI-powered insights.
• 12 months enterprise plan on simpleshow by D-ID (5-user package, valued at €9,900) for high-quality, AI-powered explainer videos.
• 12 months of ElevenLabs Startup Grants access; 33 million credits (valued at ~$5,500) and full platform access.
• A complimentary booth at the 2027 FutureTravel Summit (valued at €3,500), including 3 event tickets.

The jury

Startups will pitch in front of a jury that includes:

• Mercè Tell, Encomenda Capital Partners
• Suzanna Chiu, Amadeus Ventures
• Jose Gaytan de Ayala, Kinnevik

The jury’s questions and insights helped past participants shape their strategies, connect with investors, and grow their businesses.

More than a pitch

The FutureTravel Summit it’s a space for meaningful connections within the industry. Join us to meet the people building the future of travel, spark collaborations, and learn from the minds moving the industry forward.

Apply now for your chance to pitch and be part of one of Europe’s most dynamic event focusing on travel innovation.

A funny thing happened while the travel industry was celebrating its recovery. Demand is back, and different. The flights are full, the hotels are busy, but the map of where people are actually going has shifted. If your budget is still betting on the same cities, the map you’re using might be out of date.

The crowd is thinning at the top

For decades, London, Paris, Rome, and Barcelona dominated European travel. They’re still very popular, but the growth is spreading. More and more of the new demand is landing somewhere else.

According to Digital Sardine’s analysis of Google Trends data for US travellers searching flights to European destinations over the past two decades, London and Paris remain high-interest, but their relative share has declined while secondary cities have grown faster. Europe as a whole is attracting more travellers than ever, but a growing chunk of them are heading somewhere that wouldn’t have made the list ten years ago.

London’s case is particularly telling. Saturation, price inflation, overtourism fatigue, and the friction added by the UK’s new ETA requirement have all compounded at the margins. None of these factors is dramatic on its own. But in a market where travellers have more substitutes than ever, even small barriers are enough to tip the decision somewhere else.

Discovery moved first, then the flights followed

The redistribution started with how people find out about places. Short-form video, streaming, food media, and cultural content have reshaped which destinations enter a traveller’s consideration set, often passively, long before any search is made. A city gets featured in a Netflix series, a food creator posts from a market in Tbilisi, a travel account highlights the coastline outside Thessaloniki.. and suddenly a destination that wasn’t on anyone’s radar starts accumulating real search interest.

This is a structural change in how the top of the travel funnel works. Destinations can now build awareness without relying on traditional media or big marketing budgets. The consideration set has widened dramatically, and it keeps widening.

But curiosity alone doesn’t fill seats. What converted new interest into actual bookings was low-cost airlift. In 2025, low-cost carriers overtook mainline airlines to become the largest segment of European aviation for the first time, accounting for over 35% of all flights, up from near zero in the late 1990s. Ryanair, easyJet, Vueling, and Wizz basically rewired the map, turning secondary airports into viable options for mainstream travellers at scale. No route, no bookings – no matter how much interest there is.

The detour destination is now a default

Expedia’s Unpack ’25 research (based on a survey of 25,000 travellers across 19 countries) found that 63% plan to visit a secondary or detour destination on their next trip. Not instead of an iconic city, but alongside one. Reims near Paris, Brescia near Milan, Girona near Barcelona. Travellers are adding a stop that offers better value and fewer crowds, without scrapping the trip they originally had in mind.

Enough people are doing this now that it’s moving the needle on booking patterns, search behaviour, and where accommodation demand actually shows up.

What this means for travel brands

The next wave of growth won’t come from the same cities that drove the last one. It will come from dozens of smaller markets that don’t look like much individually, but add up to a lot when you zoom out. That has direct implications for where you build inventory, how you structure campaigns, and which markets you prioritise.

There’s also a real and underappreciated opportunity in search. Digital Sardine’s analysis of Google Ads data shows that CPCs for secondary and detour destinations are typically 15-30% lower than their iconic counterparts, with meaningfully less competition. The intent signal is just as strong (someone searching “hotels in Girona” is as close to booking as someone searching “hotels in Barcelona”) but the auction is far less crowded. Most travel brands haven’t structured their campaigns to capture this efficiently. The window for early movers is still open.

When everyone’s chasing the same cities, the game is optimisation. Now that demand is spread across dozens of smaller markets, the game is coverage: getting there before it gets obvious. The brands that move now will have a head start that’s hard to close.

→ This piece was produced in collaboration with Digital Sardine. Based on their research and data, it reflects FutureTravel’s editorial perspective on search, demand, and performance marketing in travel.

Someone opens ChatGPT: “Find me a hotel in Berlin next week, walkable to transit, quiet neighborhood, good for working remotely, under €150.” The AI considers availability, location data, reviews mentioning noise and WiFi, neighborhood characteristics, current pricing. Returns three options with reasoning. User picks one. Booking happens.

Try building this with a traditional travel API. In most cases, you can’t. Not because the hotels don’t exist. Because the infrastructure was built for humans clicking dropdown menus, not AI systems that need to reason about preferences and make autonomous decisions.

Most travel APIs still work this way: if the user selects “4-star,” return properties where star_rating = 4. Everything is explicit, binary, and predetermined. A human orchestrates every API call by clicking buttons. This architecture assumes the decision-maker is always a person in a browser. But uh, that assumption is breaking. And at least one company saw it coming early enough to do something about it.

---

Nuitée is a travel-tech infrastructure company backed by Accel, building the API backbone for how travel is distributed and consumed. Its platform is designed around three core capabilities: Connect (developer-first APIs and UI components for fast integration), Cloud (distribution and optimization solutions for hotels), and Cupid (a content-intelligence layer that structures and enriches travel data).

This isn’t about surface-level features or UI. It’s a structural approach to how data, APIs, and distribution logic are exposed. Built for scale, programmability, and automation.On top of that foundation, Nuitée has been pushing further with agentic APIs: not “AI-powered search” as a feature, but a deeper re-architecture of how the API layer works, one that allows systems to express intent, reason over constraints, and execute travel decisions programmatically.

The direction is clear: semantic search that interprets “boutique hotel near museums with rooftop access” as intent rather than matching exact keywords. Image-based room search that uses computer vision to find properties by actual visual characteristics, and not tags or metadata: lighting, layout, accessibility features visible in photos. Persistent context memory allows AI agents to refine requests conversationally instead of reconstructing queries from scratch. Response schemas optimized for language models, structured to minimize hallucination risk and reduce token costs.

But none of this is simple to build.

The APIs are designed for function chaining, where agents can autonomously decide to call search, then property details, then booking, with each step informed by reasoning about the previous results, not hardcoded if-then logic. This reduces the amount of orchestration logic developers traditionally have to hardcode, which is where much of the integration complexity used to live.

This is infrastructure built for a world where the thing making API calls is an AI that needs to understand intent, maintain conversation context, and make decisions dynamically. CEO Med Benmansour said tasks that previously took six months can now be completed in days. That kind of acceleration shows what’s possible when infrastructure is built for agents from the start. If you want to experience this for real, try vibe-coding a fully functional travel app in a few clicks using Nuitee´s liteAPI See how it works in one prompt

Most companies won’t do this kind of rebuild. Their current APIs work fine for traditional booking flows. Hard to justify ripping out infrastructure when revenue looks stable and backward compatibility is a constraint. Nuitée made the bet that the ground was shifting anyway.

---

The proof is in what’s being built on top. Revolut (the fintech super-app with 70+ million users) integrated Nuitée’s infrastructure to offer hotel booking without users leaving the banking interface. The experience understands you’re in a financial app: it shows total trip cost, handles currency properly, and integrates with expense tracking. This works because the API layer adapts to Revolut’s context rather than forcing users into a generic hotel search flow.

Nuitée’s Travel Creator Studio lets creators launch branded hotel shops where the system algorithmically curates properties based on the creator’s aesthetic and audience. No manual spreadsheet management. The platform connects to 3 million properties and handles the matching dynamically. TikTokers, Instagrammers, and YouTubers can negotiate exclusive rates directly with hotels and publish them on the platform, making those offers available only to their audience.

At a hackathon Nuitée ran with Google in October 2025, someone built a working running app that books hotels near marathon routes. It was built in 24 hours, and good enough to win! That’s only possible with APIs that can interpret “near this specific GPS route” and “check-in the day before race day” without those being predefined filter options.

These aren’t hypothetical use cases. They’re live integrations proving that when you rebuild infrastructure for reasoning rather than filtering, different kinds of distribution become possible. Embedded travel in non-travel apps. Algorithmic curation at scale. Vertical-specific booking experiences that actually understand context.

The pattern: each integration adapts to the user’s existing content. No generic booking flow forced on top. That only works if the API layer can reason about context.

The platform is backed by a content intelligence layer that understands, enriches, and optimizes travel content. It processes over 450 million hotel images using computer vision to standardize property data and generate contextually relevant descriptions. The same room can be presented differently depending on whether someone’s looking for accessibility features, sustainability certifications, or workspace quality. The content adapts to what matters for each request.

When distribution happens through AI agents and vertical apps, content needs to adapt. The same hotel room needs a different emphasis for different contexts. Static descriptions don’t scale.

They’re not building another OTA. They’re building what OTAs, fintech apps, creator platforms, and AI agents all need to function. Be the infrastructure, not the storefront.

If distribution really is fragmenting beyond traditional OTA websites into embedded experiences and autonomous agents, the company providing infrastructure for all those channels captures value from everything built on top. That’s the bet Nuitée is making with this rebuild.

The interesting question is whether they’re early or just on time. Their product roadmap suggests the window is now: deeper AI automation, loyalty integrations, making the infrastructure adaptive in real-time to demand and behavior. Everything is designed for a distribution model where autonomous systems make decisions, not just execute predetermined logic.

Most travel companies are making their filters faster. More results, better sorting, quicker load times. All useful. All built for humans clicking buttons.

Nuitée looked at the same landscape and decided the entire foundation needed to change. They spent the last months rebuilding APIs for semantic understanding, persistent context, dynamic reasoning. They launched tools for embedded travel and algorithmic curation. They’re processing hundreds of millions of images to make content contextually intelligent.

The bet: As AI embeds travel everywhere, distribution evolves from channels to programmable systems. That is the infrastructure Nuitée is building.

→ This piece was produced in collaboration with Nuitée. This is based on conversations with the team and reflects FutureTravel’s editorial perspective on where travel infrastructure is heading.

We’re excited to welcome Jordi Valls, Head of SITA Labs, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Jordi is an entrepreneurial technology executive with over 15 years of experience leading innovation across startups, scale-ups, and large organizations in Europe and North America. Over the years, he has founded several ventures (including Startup Embassy and mentor-vr, a virtual reality company focused on employee experience) and held leadership roles at Decelera, Carnovo, The Knot Worldwide, and Sunday, driving growth, product innovation, and digital transformation.

At SITA Labs, he leads a global team of aviation professionals, engineers, and innovators exploring how emerging technologies can reshape the way airports and airlines operate.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Jordi will take the stage for a keynote session titled “The Airport Playbook for 2030.” He’ll explore how intelligence is being woven into every layer of aviation, from smarter infrastructure and AI-powered systems to decision-making in the skies. Expect a front-row view of how the next decade of airports will be built. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Kim Logchies-Prins, Co-Founder and Curator of Moco Museum, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Kim leads Moco Museum, an independent cultural institution dedicated to modern, contemporary, and digital art, with locations in Amsterdam, Barcelona, and London. Since opening the first Moco in 2016, she has helped turn the museum into a global movement for accessible, emotion-driven art, welcoming over 6 million visitors from more than 180 nationalities.

Her approach to curation is rooted in empathy and storytelling. Drawing on her background in therapy, Kim curates exhibitions that connect art and emotion — combining iconic names like Banksy, Basquiat, and Yayoi Kusama with bold contemporary and digital artists. She has also championed innovation in the art world, launching Europe’s first dedicated NFT exhibition space in 2021 and introducing immersive digital experiences that invite reflection and dialogue.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Kim will join a panel on the social side of travel, exploring how experiences can spark conversation, build communities, and turn visitors into advocates who inspire others to explore. She’ll share how Moco redefined cultural discovery by blending creativity, accessibility, and storytelling, offering insights for anyone shaping the next generation of travel experiences. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Uli Pillau, CEO and Founder of Apaleo, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Uli leads Apaleo, the API-first property management platform designed to power the next generation of hospitality. Built on openness and flexibility, Apaleo enables hotels and serviced apartments to create their ideal tech stack, helping them innovate faster, integrate seamlessly, and deliver better guest experiences.

A strong advocate for collaboration and transparency in travel tech, Uli has been at the forefront of rethinking how hospitality systems connect and scale.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Uli will join a panel on trust in travel, exploring how technology, AI, and transparency are reshaping traveler expectations of fairness, clarity, and care. The conversation will dive into how trust is built not only through communication, but through the platforms and decisions that power the guest journey. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Patrick Apostolo, Director of Business Transformation at MSC Cruises, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Patrick is a transformation leader with more than 23 years of experience across hospitality, travel, technology, and entrepreneurship. At MSC Cruises, he leads large-scale transformation initiatives designed to optimise operations, enhance guest experience, and advance sustainability across both MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys.

A strong advocate for open innovation, Patrick has built MSC’s transformation model around startup collaboration and coopetition, working with emerging tech companies and ecosystem peers to accelerate progress in AI, digital planning, supply chain, and guest-facing technologies.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Patrick will join a panel on corporate-startup collaboration, exploring what it really takes to move beyond pilots and press releases toward real impact. The conversation will unpack the challenges of aligning speed with scale, the role of trust and timing, and how collaboration can drive meaningful transformation in travel and hospitality. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Oliver Kaesermann, Head of Launchpad Europe at Amadeus, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Oliver is a seasoned leader in travel tech, with over a decade of experience at Amadeus. Since joining the company in 2010, he has worked closely with OTAs and tour operators across Europe, particularly in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Today, he leads Amadeus’ Launchpad program for Europe, helping startups to grow their business with Amadeus solutions, and connecting startups with Amadeus teams and customers to drive meaningful collaboration and innovation in travel.

Based in Zurich, Oliver brings a unique perspective that bridges the corporate and startup worlds. What drives his work is the belief that partnerships (when built with vision and trust) can spark real change across the travel industry.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Oliver will join a panel on corporate-startup collaboration, exploring what it truly takes for partnerships to move beyond pilots and press releases toward lasting impact. Expect a nice conversation on alignment, trust, and how innovation happens when both sides bring their strengths to the table. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Pere Vallès, CEO of Exoticca, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Pere leads Exoticca, a traveltech platform making premium multi-day tour packages accessible to travelers worldwide. Combining technology with curated experiences, Exoticca has become one of the most dynamic players in modern travel, helping travelers discover the world through seamless, end-to-end journeys.

With over 25 years of experience in the tech industry and a strong presence in Spain’s innovation ecosystem, Pere brings a deep understanding of how technology can elevate trust and transparency in travel. His leadership reflects a balance between growth, efficiency, and creating meaningful traveler experiences.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Pere will join a panel on trust in travel, exploring how companies build and sustain it, from transparent pricing and automation to the systems and partnerships that shape the traveler experience. The conversation will unpack how trust is designed, delivered, and scaled across every part of the journey. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Judith Eyck, Chief Operating Officer at HolidayPirates, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

At HolidayPirates, Judith helps shape and deliver the company’s multi-year strategy across 10 international markets. Her focus includes scaling content creation through AI, improving user experience, and embedding a discovery-driven brand vision that keeps the platform relevant to millions of travelers.

She brings strong entrepreneurial experience as the co-founder of Vakanties.nl and as former CEO of Zoover.nl, where she combined leadership with a deep understanding of how travelers search, share, and engage with content.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Judith will join a panel on how the social side of travel is becoming a growth driver. The discussion will explore how brands can design moments that spark conversation, build loyalty through community, and turn guests into advocates who inspire the next trip. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Gian Caprini, VP Growth at Nuitée, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

With a strong background in digital growth and strategic partnerships, Gian has built his career at the intersection of technology and travel. He spent over 8 years at Expedia, driving product integration, digital optimisation, and marketing activation, and previously led Search and Social product marketing across EMEA at Microsoft. Today, he leads Growth at Nuitée, a travel technology company redefining lodging distribution through AI-driven innovation.

Gian’s experience spans startups to global enterprises, always with a focus on how technology can drive measurable business impact. From digital marketing to product partnerships, his career has been about connecting ideas to execution at scale.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Gian will join a panel on growth and revenue in the age of AI, exploring how travel companies are applying AI in practical ways to personalise offers, improve decision-making, and reshape how teams operate behind the scenes. The conversation will focus on what’s real, what’s working, and how AI is changing the economics of travel. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Andrea Lamperini, Chief Operating Officer of WeRoad, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Andrea joined WeRoad in 2019, helping transform the company from a fast-growing Italian startup into an international travel brand. Today he oversees global operations, commercial and revenue strategy, and the company’s worldwide portfolio of travel experiences and partnerships.

His leadership has been central to shaping WeRoad’s community-driven model, built to bring millennials and Gen Z together through shared travel experiences. Before WeRoad, Andrea built his career in e-commerce at Westwing, where he launched and scaled WestwingNow Italy to a €10M annual run rate in under two years.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Andrea will join a panel exploring how community dynamics, social content, and trust are reshaping discovery and conversion. The conversation will dive into how travel brands and attractions can design experiences made to be shared, build loyalty through connection, and turn repeat guests into ambassadors. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Chas Scarantino, CEO of RoomPriceGenie, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Chas is a seasoned SaaS executive with global experience building and scaling technology companies. Over his career, he has helped bring disruptive technologies to market across the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Japan, and Australia. A founder himself, he is passionate about growing and scaling teams, coaching talent, and creating collaborative cultures that put empathy for the customer at the core.

At RoomPriceGenie, Chas leads a company focused on making revenue management accessible for independent hoteliers. By combining automation with transparent pricing tools, RoomPriceGenie helps properties grow sustainably while keeping trust and fairness front and center.

At the FutureTravel Summit, Chas will join a panel on trust as a strategy in travel tech, exploring how companies can balance efficiency with traveler expectations of clarity, fairness, and care. The discussion will look at how trust is built not only through communication, but also through the systems and decisions shaping the guest journey today. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!

We’re excited to welcome Luca Carlucci, CEO and Co-Founder of BizAway, to the FutureTravel Summit 2025.

Luca leads BizAway, the all-in-one platform simplifying business travel for companies of all sizes. Since launching in 2015, BizAway has expanded across Europe and the Middle East, serving more than 2,600 corporate clients and building a reputation for combining technology, innovation, and sustainability in the way business travel is managed. 

Under Luca’s leadership, BizAway has been named by Financial Times one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies for 5 years in a row and has been the first TMC dedicated to business travel to be certified as a B Corp, reflecting a commitment to balancing growth with environmental and social responsibility. The company raised €35 million in 2024 to further expand its product and market reach, while continuing to focus on workplace well-being and building diverse, people-first teams. 

At the FutureTravel Summit, Luca will join a panel on AI, automation, and the future of customer service, exploring how technology can help brands deliver faster, more personalised experiences while protecting trust, loyalty, and the human side of service. Join us in Barcelona on October 30 to hear it live!