A Global Transit Crisis
As we move through 2026, the promise of “seamless travel” feels more like a distant memory than a modern reality. Despite technological advances, global air travel is currently grappling with a perfect storm: staffing shortages, volatile weather, and a strained supply chain.
In the past year alone, flight disruptions have reached staggering levels. For the average passenger, this isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s a financial drain. Recent data indicates that flight disruptions cost travelers billions annually in out-of-pocket expenses, from missed hotel nights to emergency rebookings.
The result? A travel public that is exhausted and increasingly aware that while they have rights, the “system” is designed to make exercising them nearly impossible.
A Critical Gap: Who is Losing Out?
While regulations mandate payouts for long-haul delays, the “justice gap” remains massive.
- The Unaware Majority: Many passengers know they have “rights,” but very few can correctly identify when they are actually entitled to cash.
- The Bureaucratic Wall: Airlines often use complex terminology to reject claims. Without technical data, a solo traveler has little hope of proving a mechanical fault over a weather delay.
- The Time-Poor Traveler: Filing a claim manually takes hours of correspondence and documentation. For a busy professional, the friction often outweighs the reward.
- The Missed Perks: Beyond airline regulations, many travelers carry credit cards with built-in travel insurance and delay protections that go completely unused because the “fine print” is too dense to navigate during a crisis.
Travelers are tired of being reactive—waiting for things to break and then struggling to fix them alone.
A Solution in an Age of Friction
In response to this chaos, TravelHelp has emerged as a digital advocate. By automating the recovery of “lost money,” TravelHelp is building a new kind of relationship with the traveler—one based on putting dollars back in their pockets.
Unlike traditional legal services, TravelHelp provides:
- Automated Detection: Through secure, permission-based Gmail integration (OAuth), TravelHelp’s AI tracks your trip details and airline statuses. It automatically spots if a flight is delayed or canceled and checks if the delay likely qualifies for compensation. It doesn’t wait for you to call or fill a form – it watches for you. Their system fills out the forms, attaches receipts or boarding passes, and negotiates (electronically) with the airline.
- Email-based data ingestion: Using bank-level encryption and safety-first logic, TravelHelp (securely) accesses your travel confirmation emails and “reads” them to extract flight dates, times, and booking info. That means you don’t have to type everything in manually – the AI parses your email itinerary.
- No fee unless you win: TravelHelp advertises a “no upfront fees” model. You only pay a success fee if they actually win your claim. This aligns incentives: if they don’t get you money, you don’t pay them
- Strategic Partnerships: TravelHelp is partnering with industry leaders to provide more insights, making your travel more seamless and more rewarding without adding to your “to-do” list.
The Vision: Your Full-Stack Travel Concierge
For founder Krishna Selvaraj and his Silicon Valley-based team, who launched the company back in 2025 in San Jose, the goal is to expand the platform into a “full-stack” travel concierge. The platform is evolving to handle everything that happens after the “Purchase” button is clicked:
- Comprehensive Recovery: The system is moving beyond simple flight delays to handle baggage claims and missed connections automatically.
- Credit Card Optimization: The AI identifies compensation opportunities hidden within the credit cards you already own, ensuring no benefit is left on the table.
- Social & Analytics: TravelHelp provides deep dives into frequent travel paths, offering personalized analytics and socializing travel data so users can see exactly how they move through the world.
- Seamless Rewarding: By integrating active bookings, the platform suggests ways to make a current trip more rewarding based on a traveler’s unique profile and historical data
A Way Forward
The question for travelers today is no longer “Will my flight be delayed?” but “Who is looking out for me when it is?” The path forward lies in having an advocate who bridges the gap between booking a flight and reaching your destination.
TravelHelp isn’t just about getting dollars back; it’s about reclaiming control over the travel experience. By focusing on accessibility, security, and real-time data, TravelHelp is ensuring that the “forgotten” parts of travel—the claims, the perks, and the data—are finally working for the traveler, not against them.
