From Silicon Valley to Vietnam: Meet the 5 Startup Finalists Heading to Travel Massive Asia Conference 2026

The finalists are in. Five early-stage startups from Singapore, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam will take the stage at the Travel Massive Asia Conference in Da Nang on August 21 to pitch to a live audience and judging panel in our travel startup pitch competition.

Each startup will present to an international panel of judges, including Mandy Nguyen (Startup Vietnam Foundation), Hannah Pearson (Pear Anderson), Keith Van (seats.aero), and Hao Tran (Vietcetera). The panel will pick a winner based on business model, size of the addressable market in Vietnam and Asia, customer happiness, sustainability, and potential to disrupt the tourism and hospitality industry for good. Every finalist walks away with direct feedback from the judges.

The competition is moderated by Ric Gazarian (Extraordinary Travel Festival) and is proudly presented by our conference sponsors, including Airwallex, Stay22, In Marketing We Trust, Heads on Pillows, and Travel Trends Podcast. The winning startup takes home two passes to FutureTravel Summit in Barcelona, Europe’s most prestigious travel startup event.

Finalists will also demo at the Travel Massive Startups booth at HorecFex (20–21 August), Vietnam’s premier technology event for the tourism and hospitality industry, which hosts Travel Massive Asia Conference on the 21st. With over 4,000 attendees and 80 exhibitor booths expected, there’s still space for you to join.

Now, let’s meet the finalists heading to Da Nang!

Why Ventures (Singapore) — Christine Ng

Why Ventures is an experiential learning and transformation platform that turns travel into a launchpad for entrepreneurship. Their flagship programme takes participants through an immersive journey — from harvesting cacao to hand-crafting their own chocolate to building a brand around it — using the process as a living framework for real-world business and marketing fundamentals.

Migo (United States) — Brad Bitler

Migo turns any messaging app number into a bookable business. The world’s best local experiences are run by people with a phone and no website. We make them discoverable, translatable, and bookable, without asking them to change a thing.

WhoanHub (Vietnam) — Huân Nguyen

WhoanHub, a product by WhoanAI, is a “chat-to-task” application for hotel daily operations. It turns scattered staff chats into tracked jobs - each with a clear owner, deadline, and audit trail. Staff claim tasks in a tap, managers watch progress live, and escalations fire automatically. The result: fewer missed tasks and faster, measurable service.

Trasys (Thailand) — Maxim Kurtov

Trasys is a digital infrastructure for the Asian tourism industry. Trasys provides a unified platform that connects tour operators, agencies, and service providers, letting them manage availability, calendars, transportation, finances, and all operational processes in real time from a single interface. By uniting market participants into a single ecosystem and providing ready-to-use B2B and B2C sales tools, Trasys makes the Asian travel market more efficient, scalable, and technology-driven.

HonestLee (Vietnam) — Patrick Oskar

HonestLee is a map-first smart city intelligence platform and in-venue operating system across Asia. We help travelers, digital nomads, and locals discover cities around their own preferences, while giving hospitality businesses a direct way to engage them. Real guest interactions, live activity, and location-verified Honest Reviews, governed by our mascot Lee, create authentic, hyper-local intelligence.

Want to be part of the action? Join us at Travel Massive Asia Conference 2026 Da Nang!

Come see these five startups pitch live. Get your ticket and join us in Vietnam (August 21-22) for two days of innovation, ideas, and community connections.