France

Polarsteps further cemented itself as an essential travel app in France in 2025. Early in the year, several news outlets reported on the 290% increase in the number of French travelers using the app compared to the previous year. This phenomenal growth continued in 2025, with more French travelers starting to use the app than ever before, putting France on course to overtake the Netherlands as the company’s number-one user base. 

In February, the French arm of global business magazine Forbes published an interview with CEO Clare Jones, asking for her take on how competitive European businesses can be against US tech companies, how AI can be a useful part of the travel landscape, and how far a traveler needs to go to find adventure. The piece hailed Polarsteps as a “travel success story”.

In April, specialist broadcaster Tech & Co ran an article about “hit app” Polarsteps, calling it “a travel journal 2.0” and setting the user experience firmly apart from other social-media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. “It’s more authentic and intimate.”

In May, Le Figaro featured Polarsteps’ new Accommodations tool, which allows travelers to book hotels, hostels, and holiday rentals directly in the app via partnerships with Booking.com, Hostelworld, and Airbnb. Polarsteps, the article said, aims to become a “super-app” pulling together everything the modern traveler needs in one place. “For a generation used to instant gratification and seamless technology, Polarsteps meets a growing expectation: the desire to travel light and spontaneously, without having to totally wing it.”

In August, Le Parisien newspaper ran a story about the rapid rise of Polarsteps as a go-to app among young French travelers, and how they use it in different ways. The paper interviewed users who referred to the app as an extension of France’s celebrated backpackers’ guide, ‘Le Guide du Routard’, and said the UI is so user-friendly that “even my grandmother can follow along”.

During the summer, CEO Clare Jones was profiled in financial broadsheet Les Echos, which summarized Polarsteps’ journey since it was founded 10 years ago. 

Germany

Travelers increasingly want to be able to plan, book, and store everything to do with their trip in one place, a need Polarsteps’ planning tool intends to meet. The company’s user data shows that German travelers are keen planners, and Germany is starting to follow France’s growth trajectory, with 53% year-on-year user growth in 2025. 

In July, Polarsteps’ growth among German travelers was picked up by major German broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Journalist Klaus Max Smolka said: “Polarsteps can be seen as a combination of Lonely Planet, Booking.com, Google Sheets, Cewe Photobook, and Instagram for personal use – all without annoying ads.” 

That same summer, regional newspaper Neue Ruhr Zeitung (NRZ) covered Polarsteps’ new Planning tool and how this dovetails with German travelers’ tendency to research and plan their trips in depth.

In October, Condé Nast Traveller (Germany) also recommended Polarsteps, telling its readers that the way it keeps travel memories alive is more effective than any souvenir: “Perhaps the souvenir simply has a different name now: Polarsteps.”

And in December, the German edition of Forbes reported on its Under 30 Summit Europe, which was held in Berlin and featured a talk by Polarsteps CEO Clare Jones. Clare discussed how travelers are increasingly using AI to plan trips, and the need to combine the output of large-language models with human checks and balances.

North America & the UK

The USA, Canada, and the UK are huge markets that are firmly in Polarsteps’ sights as the company expands beyond Europe. The Planning tool, which helps travelers plan each stage of their itinerary by suggesting next steps and providing relevant context and inspiration for each destination, is as relevant to US road-trippers crossing their own country as it is for British backpackers setting off on months-long multi-destination trips. 

In May, Polarsteps co-founder Koen Droste was interviewed for an episode of the Canadian podcast The Product Market Fit Show. During this 45-minute deep dive, Koen explained how he and the company’s other three founders succeeded where so many other travel apps failed by building growth through word of mouth and a high-quality product — the opposite of the ‘move fast and break things’ mentality that prevailed at the time. He also described how the company weathered the storm of Covid-19 pandemic, when travel stopped worldwide, and how he and the team have kept Polarsteps’ original vision alive since establishing the company 10 years ago. 

Throughout the year, the Polarsteps app was recommended by several publications, including British broadsheet the Financial Times and industry publication Tech Radar. Polarsteps was also mentioned in features and thinkpieces by websites and newspapers including Forbes.com and The Guardian; subjects ranged from travel trends to issues like overtourism, backpacking on a budget, and slow and sustainable travel. 

The Netherlands

Polarsteps is most well known in its home country, where almost one in three people now have the Polarsteps app downloaded on their phone. The app not only dominates the downloads chart in the Travel section of the App Store, but also regularly features among the most downloaded apps in the Netherlands in general. 

In February, national newspaper De Volkskrant interviewed Head of Design and co-founder Job Harmsen and CEO Clare Jones for its economic pages, focusing on Polarsteps’ long-term goal to grow to 100 million monthly active users, how its teams are harnessing AI to achieve this, and the Teleporter perk for employees.

The country’s foremost finance newspaper Het Financieele Dagblad also ran an in-depth piece about Polarsteps, explaining its unique position as an all-in-one travel app. The paper examined how far ahead of the competition Polarsteps is compared with apps offering travel-tracking journals or photo books only, and how the home-grown app plans to become a European tech success story that’s as universally known as Booking, Airbnb, and Expedia. 

Read more about Polarsteps news and feature launches on the News page or enjoy travel features and interviews written by the editorial team on the Polarsteps Stories blog. 

About Polarsteps

Recognized as one of Europe’s hottest scale-ups, Polarsteps is the market-leading travel app that helps over 19 million travelers worldwide to plan, track, and relive their adventures in a beautiful and seamless way. Using pioneering technology and design, the all-in-one app builds itineraries, maps travelers’ paths across the globe in real time, and provides a new way to share travel experiences. Headquartered in Amsterdam and powered by an international team of 90+ passionate travelers, we’re becoming the essential tool for modern-day explorers — before, during, and after their trips.