A Lisbon-based travel technology company has introduced what it describes as the first fully-digital city pass for the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira, offering travelers bundled access to more than 50 attractions, restaurants, and experiences across the island under a single QR code.
The fact that Madeira has never had a city pass might surprise anyone who has followed the island’s rise over the past few years; it’s been named the world’s top trending destination for 2026 by TripAdvisor, welcomed 2.22 million guests in 2024 with 11.7 million overnight stays, and generated a record €767.7 million in tourism revenue – up 15.3% on the year before.
Yet until this week, no one had built a bundled digital pass for it.
The Tripnly Madeira City Pass is now available through madeiracitypass.tripnly.com as well as platforms including GetYourGuide, Viator and Expedia Group.
The idea came after the company’s own CEO, Alper Aydın – who co-founded Tripnly in Istanbul in 2022 before relocating the company’s headquarters to Lisbon in early 2025 – spent two months living on the island.
“I spent two incredible months in Madeira, surrounded by breathtaking scenery, natural pools, levada trails, and a food culture unlike anything else in the world. I knew then that this island deserved a product built specifically for it,” he said.
Passes run from one to five days, starting at €22.90, with a 12-month window to activate after purchase, while the partner list covers museums, cultural landmarks, guided tours, surf schools, coworking spaces, coffee shops, local restaurants, and transport providers – alongside benefits tied to platforms like Bolt, Booking.com, and Omio.
Tripnly says it locked in more than 50 partnership agreements within four weeks of its internal launch.
Whether the pass actually moves the needle for local businesses is the more interesting question. The company projects it will generate over €5 million in annual value for Madeira’s tourism economy — a figure drawn from its own modelling.
City passes, when they work, tend to push visitors toward businesses they wouldn’t otherwise have found. The global city pass market hit $2.48 billion USD in 2024 and is forecast to grow at 11.2% annually through 2033, with much of that growth coming from exactly the kind of digital-first, no-friction format Tripnly is offering.
The broader smart ticketing market tells a similar story: valued at $14.51 billion USD in 2025 and expected to nearly triple by 2033, driven by traveller preference for contactless, QR-based access over physical tickets and queues.
The product has the backing of two institutional partners: the Madeira Startup Retreat programme, supported by Turismo de Portugal, and the Câmara Municipal do Funchal. That kind of official recognition becomes critical when trying to convince local businesses – many of them small, family-run operations with limited bandwidth for new partnerships – to sign up.
A 50% promotional discount runs through the end of May 2026 using the code TRIPNLY-LOVES-MADEIRA at madeiracitypass.tripnly.com.
Featured image: Daniel J. Schwarz via Unsplash+
Disclosure: This article mentions clients of an Espacio portfolio company.
