Three months after the ceasefire, and its enterprise as standard within the international tourism trade. The Abu Dhabi and Dubai airports are already bustling, gearing up for tens of hundreds of thousands of passengers in the course of the summer season trip. Dor Krubiner and Omry Litvak, cofounders of tech firm Mize, which operates a web based buying and selling alternate for lodge rooms and flight tickets, report file bookings and operations again to regular. “The recovery was rapid, as this industry has proven time and time again,” Krubiner concludes, “It’s not going anywhere – people will keep on flying.”
“It’s nice that I can buy an apartment for my kids”
Travel tech firm Mize, based by Krubiner and Litvak (each 40), has been working below the radar for years. The firm acts as an alternate for buying and selling lodge room stock, advertising them to websites like Booking.com and Hotels.com, in addition to to journey businesses around the globe. The firm’s central goal is the Asian tourism market, which is unsurprising as Mize was offered quietly two years in the past to SoftBank portfolio firm Yanolja Group of Korea. The deal was signed with out publicity for an estimated $250-300 million.
The founders – Krubiner, Litvak and Guy Levitan – recorded the spectacular exit after holding each a low profile and excessive capital effectivity. Since its inception, Mize raised simply $15 million from buyers corresponding to Noam Lanir, UK-based Flashpoint Venture Growth Fund, and China-based Alibaba. “We were founded as a lean startup, and we continued to work that way,” Litvak explains. Thanks to this mannequin, the founders and about 100 firm staff obtained the lion’s share of the capital. The exit is uncommon for the Israeli scene, the place firms have a tendency to lift tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, leaving nearly all of their shares within the arms of the funding funds. The founders refused remark to “Globes” on the main points of the sale however did affirm its existence. “Our friends know and are proud of us, and my wife (the actress Agam Rodberg) is very happy,” Krubiner admits. “It’s super nice to know I’ll be able to buy an apartment for my three children, and it’s super fun to know that I’ll be able to take vacations with them for the next 20 years,” Litvak says.
As far as the 2 are involved, their work has simply begun. The firm has change into an impartial profit-and-loss unit inside the Korean company, which expects to see annual development and rewards efficiency accordingly.
A Korean-style Cinderella story
Mize’s purchaser, Yanulja, is one in all East Asia’s largest tourism operators. The firm has a market share of about 70% in Korea. It is conducting an aggressive acquisition marketing campaign, having already added greater than 15 firms to its holdings.
While Yanolja brings quantity phrases of offers and presence within the Asian market, Mize is the group’s technological “brain”. The Israeli firm develops superior optimization algorithms that allow Yanolja to take care of a dominant place vis-à -vis reserving platforms and journey businesses, and streamline revenue margins utilizing applied sciences primarily based on danger administration – the identical method algorithms do for the capital market.
Yanolja is the embodiment of the Korean Cinderella story. It was based by Lee Su-jin, an orphan who had labored as a lodge room service supervisor and utilized the then-fledgling web to develop a web based reservation system that turned the lodge into an empire. This success caught the eye of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who injected $2 billion into Yanolja for the aim of an aggressive acquisition spree, which later included the Israeli firm.
The Mize acquisition was born virtually by chance, throughout an trade conference in Miami. “We came with the plan of selling the company to them, but the Korean representative didn’t turn up for the meeting,” Krubiner remembers. The entrepreneurs have been undeterred: recognizing the no-show within the exhibition corridor, one founder determined to introduce himself. The consultant already knew about Mize and was conscious that its know-how had generated hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in earnings for one firm within the sector. After a quick dialog, he even ran after them handy them a enterprise card holder together with his contact particulars. Two weeks later the deal was signed. “Opportunities exist,” Krubiner concludes. “Even if the meeting didn’t take place, we identified him, walked up to him, and approached him. We believe in doing the extra mile.”
Krubiner and Litvak began out within the capital market. Krubiner served as an funding supervisor at Infinity Investment Group, and at present sits on the funding committee of Mor Provident Funds and Pension, whereas Litvak started his profession at Yashir Investment House in the course of the Bachar Reform period, and later turned to the web fee sector. This background led them to acknowledge parallels between the capital markets and the lodge reserving trade, and to making use of algorithmic buying and selling ideas to the journey sector, the place costs fluctuate continually, very like monetary belongings.
“In the capital market, we saw that the money in options trading was being made by robots and algorithms,” Krubiner explains. “The capital market is the most sophisticated and competitive market there is. At the same time, we identified markets for other properties – such as hotel room bookings – that were far from perfect. A hotel room – like an option in the financial markets – has an expiration date, its price fluctuates constantly, and it can be traded. The idea was to build an algo-trading company for the online travel industry. We would execute investment strategies, assume the risk ourselves, and create value for our customers.”
What lies beneath Booking.com and Expedia
Beneath the floor of internet sites like Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, and Agoda lies a world during which lodge room stock is traded with excessive volatility, just like monetary belongings. The competitors between these platforms providing the very same room requires effectivity, and Mize’s algo-trading know-how mechanically manages the dangers. The system predicts worth conduct and executes “trading” in actual time, making the most of pricing gaps.
Thus, as an alternative of passive worth comparability, the system predicts market conduct and performs optimization primarily based on probabilistic evaluation, corresponding to ready for essentially the most advantageous reserving time or changing a cancellable room right into a non-cancellable one. The income mannequin relies on revenue sharing: the better the financial savings it generates for the journey giants, the upper its personal earnings. Clients profit from improved margins and cross the financial savings on to the tip client.
“One of the biggest changes we’re seeing in the market is the shift from prediction-based decisions to real-time decisions,” explains Krubiner, “Travelers book closer to the date of their trip, compare prices on multiple platforms, and expect a personalized price and experience. So, AI isn’t just an advantage any more. It’s a necessary infrastructure.”
Published by Globes, Israel enterprise news – en.globes.co.il – on July 6, 2026.
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