Airheart

What Airheart does

Airheart is a privately held, two-sided digital marketplace headquartered in Austin, Texas, founded in 2021 by solo founder Lindsey Renken. The platform connects travel content creators with individual travelers, enabling creators to design, publish, and sell curated digital travel guides through individual storefronts while travelers discover, purchase, and use these guides to build personalized itineraries. Airheart operates on a commission-based revenue model, retaining 20% of each guide sale while creators keep 80%, with a minimum guide price of $5.99 and daily payouts processed via Dwolla and Stripe. Additional revenue streams include affiliate link commissions embedded in guides and potential booking fees from an Expedia Partner Solutions integration for third-party travel reservations.

The underlying platform provides specialized guide-creation tools (destination management, place markers, region drawing, bookmarks, list organization) and traveler-facing features for itinerary customization. Group travel organization and supplementary features such as travel requirements, safety scores, and optimized routing are listed as coming soon. The technology stack relies on standard SaaS infrastructure: Stripe and Dwolla for payments, Segment for analytics, Intercom and Zendesk for customer support, Google Cloud for hosting, and Meta Pixel for advertising. Creator storefronts integrate with Instagram and TikTok accounts to drive discovery and sales, while an iOS mobile app extends marketplace access.

Airheart serves travel influencers, bloggers, and content creators on the supply side (currently invite-only during launch) and individual or group travelers on the demand side, with purchases restricted to US customers only. The company raised $325,000 in pre-seed funding in June 2022 from a group of angel investors and has accumulated over 6 million cumulative users since 2021, primarily through its pandemic-era Travel Bans Explorer tool, alongside a 105k+ email subscriber list and approximately 20 premium guides currently listed. Notable press coverage includes Forbes, Washington Post, Skift, BuiltIn Austin, and Business Traveler.

Name

Airheart

Legal name

Airheart, Inc.

Website

https://airheart.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2021

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Airheart is an Austin-based digital marketplace where travel content creators sell curated digital travel guides to individual travelers, taking a 20% commission. Founded in 2021 by solo founder Lindsey Renken, the platform serves US customers with invite-only creator onboarding and an 80/20 revenue split.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Travel Guide Marketplace

NAICS

Tour Operators (56152)

SIC

Services-Miscellaneous Amusement & Recreation (7990)

akta.pro primary industry

Tours, Activities & Experiences Booking (HSACAKAF)

akta.pro secondary industry

Destination/Activity Booking Marketplaces (Tours & Tickets Aggregators) (THAKAAAH)

Keywords

• Travel guide marketplace
• Digital travel guides
• Travel itinerary planning
• Creator marketplace
• Trip planning tools

Headquarters

HQ city

Austin

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Personnel, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Travel Guide Sales Commission: Marketplace commission model where Airheart charges creators 20% commission on each guide sale. Creators receive 80% of the published price. Payments processed via Dwolla with daily disbursement to creators. Minimum guide price is $5.99 USD. Airheart is merchant of record for all sales.
2. Affiliate Commission Revenue: Creators can integrate affiliate links within guides to earn additional commissions on travel-related bookings (hotels, activities, etc.). Airheart likely takes a percentage of affiliate revenue as platform facilitator.
3. Third-Party Travel Bookings: Platform facilitates bookings for third-party services (travel, accommodations) through Expedia Partner Solutions integration. Revenue generated through booking fees or commissions from supplier partnerships.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Airheart operates a two-sided digital marketplace where vetted travel content creators design, list, and sell curated digital travel guides to individual travelers. The platform provides creator-facing tools for building guides (destinations, highlights, pins, regions, bookmarks) and traveler-facing tools for discovering guides and converting them into personalized itineraries, with Airheart retaining a 20% commission on each sale.

Product overview

Airheart operates as a unified digital travel guide marketplace platform with creator-sold travel guides as its core offering. The platform consists of the main Airheart marketplace where creators design and list travel guides for sale, and travelers discover and purchase these guides to create customized itineraries. Supporting features include group travel organization tools (coming soon) and supplementary travel requirements data including safety scores and routing (coming soon). The platform facilitates a 80/20 revenue split favoring creators and enables affiliate link integration for additional earning potential.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Airheart Travel Guide Marketplace Digital marketplace platform connecting travel content creators with travelers, enabling creators to monetize expertise by selling digital travel guides and travelers to discover and purchase guides for trip planning.
• Travel Guides (Creator-Sold) Digital travel itineraries authored by individual creators covering specific destinations (e.g., Tokyo, Rome, Thailand, Waco) and sold to travelers; include destinations, highlights, places, regions, and recommendations usable for trip planning.
• Travel Bans Explorer Pandemic-era travel restrictions tool that helped travelers understand border and entry requirements across destinations.

Named customers4 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration8 records

Feature4 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered core and supporting.

• DwollacoreTechnology or IntegrationPayment processing platform for creator commissions. Airheart authorizes Dwolla to access creator bank account information for payment disbursement. Creators must share account/routing numbers with Dwolla for commission payments.
• StripecoreTechnology or IntegrationPayment processing, analytics, and business services. Stripe collects identifying information about devices connecting to Airheart services for fraud detection and service improvement.
• Expedia Partner SolutionscoreTechnology or IntegrationThird-party travel booking provider referenced in Terms of Service for bookings made through the platform. Supplier Terms and Conditions apply to bookings.
• SegmentsupportingTechnology or IntegrationCustomer data platform used for analytics and tracking. Part of Airheart's technology stack for understanding user interactions.
• Meta PixelsupportingTechnology or IntegrationAdvertising and tracking technology used for targeted marketing and conversion tracking on the platform.
• IntercomsupportingTechnology or IntegrationCustomer messaging and support platform used for customer service and communication. Data stored by Intercom per Privacy Policy.
• ZendesksupportingTechnology or IntegrationCustomer service and support platform. Data stored by Zendesk as part of Airheart's trusted third-party provider infrastructure.
• Google CloudsupportingTechnology or IntegrationCloud infrastructure and storage provider. Airheart databases and systems stored/processed by Google Cloud with security measures in place.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Withlocals: Withlocals is a marketplace for private, local-host-led tours and experiences across multiple cities, comparable to Airheart in connecting individual creators/hosts with travelers seeking authentic local guidance.
• Peek: Peek is a software and marketplace platform for tours, activities, and experiences that helps operators manage inventory and reach travelers, similar to Airheart's role of connecting curated content creators with travelers.
• TourRadar: TourRadar is a multi-day tour and adventure-travel marketplace aggregating itineraries from hundreds of operators, structurally analogous to Airheart as a curated-itinerary discovery and booking platform.
• GetYourGuide: GetYourGuide is a global online marketplace for tours, activities, and travel experiences, directly comparable to Airheart's marketplace model of connecting curated content with travelers seeking guided experiences.
• Viator: Viator, owned by Tripadvisor, is a leading tours-and-activities marketplace with hundreds of thousands of bookable experiences, operating on the same two-sided marketplace structure as Airheart.
• Klook: Klook is a major Asia-based travel activities and services booking platform that connects travelers with tours, attractions, and local experiences, competing in the same activity-discovery space as Airheart.

Broad incumbents

• Airbnb Experiences: Airbnb Experiences is a large, established platform offering host-led activities and tours alongside Airbnb's core accommodation business, an overlapping but broader incumbent comparable to Airheart's curated local-experience model.

Emerging players

• Roam Around: Roam Around is an AI travel-itinerary generator that produces custom travel plans on demand, representing the AI-native alternative to the human-creator guides sold on Airheart's marketplace.
• Layla: Layla is an AI-powered travel planning assistant that helps travelers build personalized itineraries, competing in the same discovery-and-planning lane as Airheart but with AI rather than creator-driven content.
• Wanderlog: Wanderlog is a trip-planning app that helps travelers build collaborative itineraries and access travel content, overlapping with Airheart's group itinerary-planning value proposition.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/airheartinc
• Facebookfacebook.com/AirheartInc
• Instagraminstagram.com/airheartinc
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/airheartinc

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Airheart