For years, online travel has made flights and hotels relatively easy to compare. The messier part begins after touchdown: finding the right train, coach, ferry or local connection, often across operators that do not share booking systems, languages or payment flows.
That gap is where Berlin‑based Omio is placing its next big Asia bet.
The multimodal travel booking platform has secured a $10 million strategic investment from Granite‑Integral, a Japan‑focused growth investment platform backed by Granite Asia and Integral Corporation.
The funding will support Omio’s expansion in Japan and help strengthen its presence across Southeast Asia, two regions where international tourism is rebounding quickly and travellers are increasingly designing trips around transport access rather than just destinations.
Omio enables users to search, compare and book different modes of transport—including trains, buses, ferries and flights—through a single interface. Its broader group also includes Rome2Rio, a route‑planning platform acquired in 2019 that helps travellers map complex journeys.
The new partnership with Granite‑Integral is intended to deepen transport‑operator relationships in Japan and Southeast Asia, improve the product for local and international users, and grow regional teams, including in Japan and at its AI‑focused technology hub in Singapore.
Asia’s fragmented travel map
The timing is not accidental. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest‑growing travel region globally over the next five years, while Omio says nearly half of travellers are now planning journeys that involve more than one mode of transport.
That shift is especially relevant in Southeast Asia, where cross‑border and domestic travel often depends on combinations of low‑cost flights, coaches, ferries, trains and private transfers. A traveller moving from Singapore to a Thai island, from Ho Chi Minh City to Cambodia, or from Bali to secondary Indonesian destinations may need several operators and separate bookings to complete one trip.
For founders and operators in the region, the opportunity is not just in selling tickets. It is in turning fragmented transport supply into usable digital infrastructure. Southeast Asia has strong demand from backpackers, business travellers, digital nomads and a growing middle class, but its ground and sea transport systems remain unevenly digitised. Many operators still rely on offline sales, agent networks or local booking channels that are difficult for international travellers to access.
That creates room for platforms that can aggregate inventory, simplify payments, and give users confidence that a journey involving multiple legs will actually work.
Japan presents a different but equally complex challenge. Its transport system is among the world’s most advanced, but it is also dense, operator‑heavy and sometimes difficult for overseas visitors to navigate beyond the biggest cities. Omio launched in Japan earlier this year and says it is already seeing demand from international travellers booking along the Golden Route, the popular corridor linking cities such as Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, as well as trips to mountain regions, sacred routes and coastal communities.
The company has been expanding its Japanese transport network through partnerships with operators, including Japan Railways and Willer Express.
“Millions of travellers visit every year, but planning journeys across different operators and transport modes can still be complex, particularly beyond the major cities,” said Naren Shaam, founder and CEO of Omio. “With Granite‑Integral’s regional expertise, we intend to accelerate a new era of connected travel in Japan, expand our presence across Southeast Asia and continue building a more connected future for travel across Asia.”
Why Granite‑Integral matters
Granite‑Integral brings more than capital to the table. The platform is a joint venture between Granite Asia and Integral Corporation, managing $100 million in committed capital. Granite Asia has experience investing across Asia Pacific’s technology sector, while Integral brings operational expertise and networks in Japan.
For Omio, that combination matters because transport aggregation is a local relationship business as much as a technology problem. Signing up transport operators, integrating inventory, handling customer support, and navigating local payment preferences all require market‑specific execution.
CK Choun, Co‑Head of Granite‑Integral, said Japan and Southeast Asia represent “some of the most important long‑term opportunities in global travel”, with rising demand for more connected journeys across the region. He added that Omio’s platform is built to simplify increasingly fragmented travel experiences.
Omio says it currently offers bookable transport options across 48 countries and serves more than one billion users annually across its platforms. The group sells more than 100 000 tickets daily, employs over 470 people from more than 50 countries, and maintains offices in Berlin, Singapore, Prague, Melbourne and Bangalore.
The company has also set an ambitious target to expand into more than 70 markets worldwide by 2028, with Japan and Southeast Asia named as key priorities.
Rivals chasing the same traveller
Omio is not alone in seeing the value of multimodal travel in Asia. In Europe, Trainline remains a major player in rail and coach booking, while Trip.com Group has deep reach across flights, hotels and rail in Asia, especially among Chinese and regional travellers.
In Southeast Asia, platforms such as Traveloka and Klook have built strong consumer brands around flights, accommodation, activities and transport‑adjacent services, while 12Go has long focused on buses, ferries, trains and transfers across emerging travel markets.
Global giants such as Booking Holdings and Expedia Group also have the distribution power to move further into connected trip planning, though transport beyond flights remains a harder category to standardise.
Omio’s challenge will be to prove that it can localise deeply enough while keeping the simplicity that made its European product useful. Southeast Asia, in particular, is not one market. Indonesia’s island geography, Vietnam’s coach networks, Thailand’s tourism corridors and Singapore’s role as a regional hub all require different supply strategies.
If Omio can stitch those pieces together, its regional push could tap into a larger change in travel behaviour: people are no longer only asking where they can go, but how easily they can move once they get there. That question is becoming central to tourism growth across Asia. For Japan, it could help spread visitors beyond crowded urban routes. For Southeast Asia, it could make secondary destinations more accessible and commercially viable. For Omio, it is the opening it needs to turn multimodal travel from a niche convenience into a mainstream booking habit.
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