Emerging Travel Group Hits $4.8B Transaction Record, Driven by RateHawk Surge

Emerging Travel Group (ETG), the UAE-headquartered travel tech player, has posted a record $4.8 billion in gross transaction value for 2025, up 30% on the previous year. In a sector where margins are often thin and competition is fierce, that kind of growth is, well… nothing to sniff at.

The bulk of this momentum came from RateHawk, ETG’s flagship B2B platform, which quietly marks its 10th anniversary this year. For those not deep in the travel trade, RateHawk allows travel professionals to book hotels, flights, transfers and other services through one system. Simple on the surface, but behind the scenes it’s a heavy-lifting operation.

In 2025, RateHawk’s net booking value climbed 40% year on year, continuing a decade of double-digit expansion. The number of partners using the platform jumped 37%, crossing 110,000 travel professionals globally. Transport bookings were also up 33%, driven largely by flights and transfers.

Felix Shpilman, President and CEO of Emerging Travel Group, said the company’s partner-focused approach helped it achieve strong market fit in Europe and the Middle East, while also pushing into Asia, Latin America and North America with both its booking platform and API products. The API itself, which gives access to 3.2 million accommodation options, recorded a 40% rise in gross bookings. Its network of API partners expanded by 33% to more than 1,400 companies, including Make My Trip, LCC Deutschland and Global Star during 2025.

The GCC market, closer to home for many Arageek readers, showed particularly sharp growth. The number of connected travel agents in the region rose 12% to more than 9,000, while net booking value surged 66% year over year. That’s not just steady progress; that’s pedal-to-the-metal expansion.

On the supply side, ETG added more than 50 new accommodation suppliers last year, bringing its total to 350 providers and pushing overall accommodation inventory up 23%. Direct hotel partnerships doubled to 250,000 properties, mainly across the US, Europe and the Middle East. Integration upgrades included connections with DerbySoft Exchange, Simple Booking and InnGenius, alongside more than 80 channel managers.

Shpilman noted that combining wholesalers, DMCs and direct hotel contracts allows the group to offer both wide coverage and competitive pricing, even in remote or exotic destinations. At the same time, strengthening direct links with hotel chains and independents in high-demand areas helps secure sharper rates and broader availability. I reckon this hybrid approach, scale plus direct ties, is what gives platforms like RateHawk a real edge in such a fragmented industry.

And then there’s AI. ETG has rolled out agentic AI tools in customer support, trained to classify and prioritise incoming queries, decide on next steps and handle routine tasks. The idea is straightforward: speed up resolutions and free human agents to tackle trickier cases. Beyond support, AI is being used for supply aggregation, content localisation and spotting booking issues before they spiral into a bit of a faff.

Shpilman described travel as a highly fragmented space and called AI a “game-changer” for back-end processes, pointing to predictive, generative and agentic tools already embedded across product, analytics and support teams.

Founded in 2010, Emerging Travel Group now operates across more than 190 source markets and employs over 3,900 people worldwide. Its ecosystem covers 3.2 million hotels, flights from 450 airlines, transfers in 150 countries and a range of other travel services. It’s a vast operation by any measure.

For startup founders watching from the sidelines, especially in MENA, where travel tech ambition is definately alive, the message feels spot on: scale matters, but so does infrastructure. Distribution, connectivity, automation. It’s not glamorous, maybe, but it’s the plumbing that keeps the engine running. And when it works, as ETG’s latest numbers show, it can really move the needle.

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