The market of growing travel startups is firmly in Chinese hands. European companies hardly play a role internationally. This is shown by a documentation of the Lufthansa Innovation Hub (LIH), which has now opened a branch in Singapore. The analysts looked at the app stores and the VC activities of the airlines.
Among the ten fastest-growing offerings in the Apple App Store are just two companies from the US and one from Europe: Lime and Bird, the rental platforms for electric scooters, as well as the booking platform Booking. According to the study, the fastest growing app is Dida Chuxing (not a typo), a challenger to the Didi Chuxing riddle-landing app.
Two Europeans in the Google charts
Looking at the Google Play Store, according to LIH the app “Where is my train” is the fastest growing program. Startup Sigmoid Labs, which was acquired by Google in 2018, is from India and has developed the App for Schedule Information in real time. After all, two Europeans are in the top ten of the Google Playstore: Booking and BlaBlaCar.
The analysts of the LIH have also created a ranking of the airlines that invest the most in startups – in which the parent company does not appear. The low-cost airlines JetBlue (USA), Qantas (Australia) and Air Asia, a Malaysian low-cost airline, are the most active inves- tors with 20, 12 and 10 startup participations, respectively.
The European Easyjet followed in ninth place with four investments. Lufthansa had recently concluded an alliance with the Canadian startup Hopper, which predicts the price development of air travel.