There have been some incredible developments in the travel industry over the last couple of years – and lots of those are making booking and planning a trip simple and stress-free.

The travel industry depends on modern technology to keep it constantly improving. While there are big EU-born players like Booking, TUI, FlixMobility and Tripadvisor, many new innovative startups are showing impressive growth in recent years.

The summer season has kicked off, and if you haven’t yet, it might be time to start planning a trip to take some days off and disconnect. This article highlights the best European-based startups that can help users book holidays, arrange transportation and plan itineraries.

Secret Escapes

HQ: London

Employees: 505

Company Type: Travel Arrangements

Tech stack: Python, Django, Graphql, MySQL, Redis, Memcached, AWS (EC2, Route53, Aurora, DynamoDB), Git, Circle CI, Jenkins, Celery, RabbitMQ, Grafana, New Relic

Secret Escapes is the UK’s biggest members-only travel website. This team is on a mission to make travelling a stress- free experience. With over 62 million members (20 million in the UK) across the world, and a social media following of a small country, this travel company offers luxury 4 star and 5 star travel deals at low prices, including offer comparisons and unbeatable prices.

Fly now Pay Later 

HQ: London

Employees: 47

Company Type: Financial Services

Tech Stack: : Laravel framework, PHP 8, 7, 5 versions, MySQL, PHPUnit, Git, Docker.

Ever wish you didn’t have to save every penny for your bucket list travel experience? Introducing: Fly Now, Pay Later. This app allows you to choose a trip and book it via their app. They then pay for your holiday on your behalf directly with the travel provider and you select the payment terms at which you pay them back over time.

Duffel

HQ: London

Employees: 73
Company Type: Travel Toolkit API

Tech Stack: Erlang, Elixir, Sentry, PostgreSQL, Metabase, Google Cloud Platform, Phoenix, Elixir

Duffel is an online travel API that offers travel companies a product suite to create and build the best travel experience for their customers. The suite includes products across flight search, loyalty programmes or hotel shopping to name a few. Their easy-to-use  API includes comprehensive documentation and client libraries in Node.js, Python and Ruby.

Flash Pack

HQ: London

Employees: 66

Company Type: Boutique travel for solo travel

Tech Stack: Apollo GraphQL, React.js

Flash Pack is an adventure travel company that brings together solo travellers in their 30s and 40s. Their mission is to create a great group dynamic between like-minded travellers and empower single travellers looking for adventure. Flash Pack’s shaking off the tired old clichés associated with group travel and since their launch in 2014, their travel community has grown to an impressive 130,000 Flashpackers in more than 15 countries.

Get Your Guide

HQ: Berlin

Employees: 937

Company Type: Travel experiences Booking platform

Tech stack: Java, GraphQL, TypeScript, CI, Vue.js

Get Your Guide is a booking app that allows modern travellers to book experiences in their travel destination. Their app helps travellers discover a destination’s best activities and attractions. They provide activity and experience partners with data-driven insights, technology and market expertise across 190 countries. Their most recent round of Funding hit a record-breaking $194M!

WeTravel

HQ: San Francisco (Tech teams in The Netherlands)

Employees: 152

Company Type: Travel Booking and payment platform

Tech Stack: JavaScript, Git, Node.js, Visual Studio Code, and Docker

WeTravel is a multi-solution, integrated platform that empowers thousands of multi-day and group-travel companies to manage pre-departures. Their platform includes itinerary builders, lead generation tools and custom payment options all connected to interactive analytics dashboards.

Founded in 2016, WeTravel now works with thousands of multi-day travel companies to transact with nearly 500,000 travellers and thousands of suppliers.

Civitatis.com

HQ: Madrid

Employees: 278

Company type: Spanish-speaking Activities Platform

Civitatis is a leading online platform used by Spanish-Speaking travellers for booking activities, day trips and guided tours in the most visited tourist destinations in the Spanish-speaking market. With over 70,000 activities across 3,000 destinations