Don't Start a Travel Startup: 14 Hard Lessons from Skift

Skift just published 'Don\'t Start a Travel Startup', an article that condenses fourteen years of watching where the bodies are buried in the travel startup space. The founder shares 14 layers of advice for anyone thinking of launching. My take: the real customer is the investor, not the traveler. Funding must come before client acquisition. Many startups focus on selling to hotels or travelers and forget that without capital, there's no product to scale.

The article doesn't sugarcoat: it talks about recurring mistakes, how technical enthusiasm clashes with market reality, and why most travel startups end up in the trash bin. But it's not defeatist. It's a practical guide to not repeating the same errors. If you're a founder or investor, read it and adjust your strategy. The opportunity lies in knowing where the corpses are so you don't step on them.