The immigrant story behind a Cyprus travel startup

Cypriot entrepreneur Elias Orfanou did not pick the easiest moment to start thinking about travel. In 2020, while the world was shutting down and tourism was being pushed into one of the darkest periods in its history, a university idea at UCLan Cyprus began to take shape.

Five years later, that idea has taken him far from the classroom. Orfanou has left his job, moved alone to New York and rebuilt TravelX as a tour booking platform, with ambitions that now stretch well beyond tours into...