ITB Travel Tech Startup Pitches
Summary
This is Part 2 of a 3-part ITB Berlin Travel Technology Startup Session, hosted by Lea Jordan. Four travel tech founders each delivered three-minute pitches before a panel of judges: Lars Mangelsdorf, Yuen Suzanna Chiu, and Michael Treskow. The session showcased early-stage startups addressing distribution, video marketing, hotel content optimization, and hospitality payments.
Startup 1: Aquera (CEO: Danielle Finch) addresses the distribution gap for community-based tourism organizations (CBTOs) — locally-rooted operators that reinvest revenue into their communities but lack digital infrastructure to reach travelers. Finch positioned Aquera as the 'critical infrastructure' for this underserved segment, noting that 90% of travelers want to experience life like a local and 69% want to leave a place better than they found it. The CBTO market is growing 2.4x faster than the general travel market, representing a $5.6 billion opportunity. Aquera projects $33 million ARR by year five. The company launched its pilot in September in Uganda and Rwanda, digitizing over 170 products across 12 countries, with 100 communities validated. Their first distribution partnership went from LOI to live inventory in six weeks. The company is raising $590K in a pre-seed SAFE, backed by travel tech executives. Finch's background includes digitizing complex processes at Michelin and HomeToGo. The panel raised questions about AI replication risk, which Finch countered by noting that supply enablement — physically training CBTOs to articulate their products — cannot easily be automated. The business model spans B2B (connecting operators to agencies and DMCs) and B2C, with commission-based revenue plus future SaaS products.
Startup 2: Strana AI (CEO: Jakob Riegger) generates marketing videos from static hotel photos using AI. Riegger cited an Expedia study showing videos convert 3-4x better than photos, yet video production costs have kept most hotels from adopting them. Strana is 5 months old, has produced hundreds of videos, and has thousands of scenes contracted. The platform uses a modular 'assembly line' approach with best-in-class AI models plus human editors, ensuring physical hotel details remain unchanged. Future roadmap includes personalized videos — allowing travelers to see themselves in hotel environments. Pricing is usage-based (per scene/credit) with subscription options for social media content. Riegger previously founded TrustYou, an online review company, and returned to travel at ITB after a 7-year absence. The panel debated authenticity concerns about AI-generated video and whether hotels could simply replicate the product with consumer AI tools; Riegger argued professional multi-scene video with brand integrity requires significant expertise beyond simple prompting.
Startup 3: Avenue AI / EVenue (Co-founder: Roland Hehn) is a plug-and-play platform that converts static hotel websites into dynamic, localized, AI-optimized content engines. Hehn, with 25 years in hotels and 20 years in tech, previously founded HQ Revenue (competitor rate visibility). The platform maps a property and its surroundings, generating event posts, city guides, and neighborhood highlights, claims to cut content research and creation time by over 80%, and structures content specifically for LLMs. Hehn stated that 50% of buying decisions in travel are already AI-based. The panel debated the distinction between traditional SEO and LLM/GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and how EVenue differentiates from agencies increasingly offering similar services. Hehn noted hotels could use EVenue directly without agency intermediaries and that agencies could also white-label the tool. Business model is B2B SaaS, sold to hotels directly or via agencies.
Startup 4: One Journey / Swift Pay (CEO: Brian Dass) is a hospitality payment card and AI invoice reconciliation solution. Using the example of a 100-room full-service hotel generating $11 million annually, Dass illustrated that 90% of revenue is expenses, with 70% of non-payroll expenses being supplier payments. Manual invoice reconciliation costs this example hotel $150,000/year across 3,000 invoices handled by 2.5 staff. Swift Pay offers AI-automated reconciliation and a Visa/Mastercard-backed payment card available in 200+ countries in two variants: a prefunded blue card and a flex-pay black card with float. Hotels earn 1-2% cash back on transactions. In Dass's example, if 40% of expenses are paid via the card, the hotel earns $28,000 in cash back plus $90,000 in reconciliation savings — totaling $118,000, a 10.6% bump on a $1.1 million net profit, equivalent to generating $1.1 million in new bookings or 5,900 room nights without any marketing spend. The total hotel accounts payable market exceeds $300 billion annually. One Journey launched in January 2025, raised a seed round in 2025, has 12 hotels transacting, and exited ITB with a pipeline of over 1,000 hotels. Supplier card acceptance is ~85% in the US and 65-70% in Europe. The business monetizes via interchange basis points paid by banks, with no setup or ongoing fees to hotels.
Key Takeaways
- •Danielle Finch (Aquera) identified community-based tourism as a $5.6 billion market growing 2.4x faster than the general travel market, with 90% of travelers wanting local experiences and 69% wanting to leave destinations better than they found them — yet CBTO products remain trapped in PDFs and WhatsApp threads, invisible and unbookable at scale.
- •Aquera launched in Uganda and Rwanda in September, digitizing 170+ products across 100 communities in 12 countries within its first months, and achieved its first distribution partnership from LOI to live inventory in just six weeks — demonstrating a repeatable destination playbook targeting 11 countries by year-end.
- •Aquera is raising $590K in a pre-seed SAFE, projecting $33M ARR by year five, and uses existing CBTO network associations (a model developed by aid organizations since the 1970s) to acquire suppliers at low customer acquisition cost rather than building a new network.
- •Jakob Riegger (Strana AI) cited an Expedia study showing video converts 3-4x better than photos, positioning Strana's AI video generation from static images as a direct response to hotels' inability to afford traditional video crews. At just 5 months old, Strana has produced hundreds of videos with thousands of scenes contracted.
- •Strana AI's competitive moat, per Riegger, is its 'assembly line' approach combining best-in-class AI models with human editors to ensure physical hotel details remain unchanged — preventing the brand hallucinations that occur with consumer AI tools like basic video generators. Pricing is per scene (credit-based) with subscription options for social media use cases.
- •Riegger's roadmap includes personalized travel videos — where potential guests can see themselves in hotel environments — drawing a parallel to fashion industry AI video experiences, signaling a shift toward hyper-personalized travel marketing.
- •Roland Hehn (Avenue AI / EVenue) claimed that 50% of buying decisions in the travel industry are already AI-based, framing hotel LLM discoverability as the next critical battleground for direct bookings — positioning EVenue as a tool to structure content so LLMs pull from a hotel's direct site rather than OTAs.
Transcript
Before I collect your thoughts, I think we're going to move to the pitches because we don't want to stress them out, right? And more even more, right? Because I know I mean we have to appreciate that. Um, who of us loves that? Going on stage and being judged. I mean, right. So, kudos to you to being here. We really appreciate that. Um, and are you ready for the pictures? Shall we take them on? >> I'm excited. Let's do it. >> Yes. Go. >> So, I'm not sure. Can you see really well there because we ...
