Vionmo Wins the ‘Travel Startup Night’ With Mobility Data for Tourism

Austrian start-up vionmo won the Travel Start-up Night Vienna 2026 by making a simple but awkward point: the biggest climate problem in tourism is often getting to the destination. At the pitch event at the ÖBB Innovation Lab in Vienna’s main train station, five young companies presented ideas for the sector, and the audience picked vionmo as the winner. Touristinfo.ai from South Tyrol came second.

The prize sends vionmo on to the annual final in Germany, where it will compete for the title Travel Start-up 2026. The event was put together by the Travel Industry Club Tourismus Austria, the Travel Industry Club Germany and the German Association for Internet Travel Sales, according to the press release.

Vionmo works with visitor and mobility data for destinations, leisure facilities and events, then turns that into actions. That can mean shuttles, visitor management, targeted marketing, or more bus service in a region. Founder and CEO Michael Jayasekara says tourism and transport should be treated as one system, because travel to the destination is often the part that produces the largest share of emissions and is still barely measured in any structured way.

And vionmo was not the only company leaning on data and automation. Three of the five start-ups pitched artificial intelligence, a sign that tourism is already using it in very different ways: touristinfo.ai in destination management, Majourny as a digital employee for hotel teams, and Neural Natives with a concierge inside WhatsApp. FemSupply took a different route entirely, aiming to make feminine hygiene products part of the hotel experience.

Touristinfo.ai, from Mediatize in Bolzano’s NOI Techpark, uses a multilingual chatbot that pulls in live traffic, parking, weather and event data. It can steer guests toward public transport or less crowded places, and is already used in San Vigilio di Marebbe, among other places. For the organizers, though, the real test is what follows the applause: contacts, partnerships and actual deployment, not just a nice pitch night.