Nicosia, Cyprus. Cypriot entrepreneur Elias Orfanou has moved to New York to rebuild TravelX, a tour booking platform developed from a university idea in 2020 during the Covid-19 shutdowns.
The founder said the venture has faced repeated setbacks, including the departure of two teams, before he left his job and Cyprus in 2025 to pursue its expansion.
From university idea to startup
TravelX began at UCLan Cyprus in 2020 and won the Startup IdeaFest award for best entrepreneurial idea. The recognition encouraged Orfanou and his original team to develop the concept beyond its university presentation.
A month after work began on the project, the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted global travel and froze the tourism industry. Orfanou said the team initially viewed the situation as a test of their commitment, but after another month of lockdowns he was the only member still continuing with the project.
Developing the platform
During the pandemic, Orfanou taught himself coding, marketing, sales, customer acquisition, retention, startup growth and capital raising. It took him a year to build the first prototype.
In 2021, a new team joined the project. However, as Orfanou continued to discuss taking TravelX to the United States, members of the second team also left.
Move to New York
Orfanou said he struggled to find a team in Cyprus willing to work at the pace he envisaged or support the scale of his plans. In 2025, he decided to leave his job and move alone to New York.
There, he met an engineer who supported the TravelX project, and the pair began rebuilding the platform. Orfanou’s plans for TravelX extend beyond tours to hotels, content, events, artificial intelligence and a broader travel ecosystem.
Travel industry challenge
The company was based on an issue Orfanou observed while working in hotels during his studies. He said tourists were often uncertain about activities during their stay, while hotels could generally recommend only tours provided by their existing partners.