On April 30,2019 at the TSI Travel API & Microservices Tech Symposium, CEO Trideep Aggarwal of TWAI met with CEO, Varun Bansal of Airlines Technology. After the Symposium the two CEO’s engaged and started to discuss an API licensing deal. The licensing interest turned to acquisition talks. On January 28, 2020 the companies publicly announced the acquisition.
As early investors in Airlines Technology, TSI believes the TWAI acquisition will help Airlines Technology commercialize the NDC API with 19 airlines globally through TWAI’s TripMole and their large agency customer base. “We launched the first Travel API & Microservices Tech Symposium on April 30, 2019 bringing together 30 global companies for the sole focus of meeting one-on-one to facilitate pilots and licensing of APIs, Microservices and new technologies. We held 150 meetings in 8-hours with 10 of the largest travel companies in the world and 20 emerging travel tech startups in attendance. We didn’t initially see acquisitions coming out of the Symposiums, but that is exactly what happened from the TWAI and Airlines Technology meeting, said, Matt Zito, Managing Partner of TSI.”
Below is a slide showing the engagement and deals that were derived from attendees meeting 1:1 at the April 30th Symposium.
On Jan 7, 2020, TSI held the 2nd Travel API & Microservices Symposium and launched an inaugural TSI Travel Tech Investment Symposium on Jan 8, 2020. The investment Symposium brought together 21 investors and 18 emerging travel tech companies for 1-day of 1:1 meetings between investors and startup founders. Feedback is just starting to trickle in. We know one company has been funded by multiple investors that attended and another 5-10 companies will likely receive funding over the next 4-12 months.
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The 2nd TSI Travel API & MicroServices Tech Symposium was held on Jan 7th. The following day we launched the 1st TSI Travel Tech Investment Symposium. (350) 1:1 meetings took place over 2-days between (35) Emerging Travel Tech Startups, (10) Large Travel Companies and (21) Investors. Prior to publishing, MyLifeID told us they received an investment from an angel investor they met in one of the 1:1 investor meetings.
Special thanks to our lead sponsor BCD Travel, venue sponsor Amadeus for Startups, happy hour sponsor Traxo for sponsoring the API symposium.
21 investors attended the Jan 8th investment symposium including, JetBlue Technology Ventures, Thayer Ventures, Amadeus Ventures, HotelPlanner, New World Angels and Vocap Investment Partners.
Highlights from Jan 7th
TSI shared KPIs from the April 30th Travel API Symposium.
On average, each company that attended, 3-months post the Symposium had 2-3 pilot or licensing deals in the works.
2 emerging travel tech companies were featured in roadshows by 2 of the larger travel companies.
TWAI announced the acquisition of Airlines Technology. The 2 companies met at a 1:1 meeting at the April Symposium.
8 presentations were made including Amadeus for Startups, OccasionGenius, Traxo, UnDelay, 3Victors, W2M, Trip Ninja and BCD Travel.
2 panel sessions from panelists, Miriam Moscovici BCD Travel, Scott Gillespie ARC, Andres Fabris Traxo, Johnny Thorsen Amex Labs, Riccardo Vittoria 30SecondsToFly, Rastko Ilic Thomalex, Alexi Vereschaga Award Wallet, Brett Zeigler Trip Ninja.
Matt Zito, Moondeep Aggarwal, Trideep Aggarawal, Nicole Zito
TSI Private Symposiums. Matt Zito with CEO Trip Ninja Sold to WebJet, CEO 30Secondstofly Sold to AmexGBT, CEO Award Wallet, CEO Thomalex
Highlights from Jan 8th
21 investors and 18 emerging travel tech companies were in attendance.
5 presentations were made from TraknProtect, Trip Ninja, OccasionGenius, MyLifeID, and Ganesh Mani from Carnegie Mellon University.
Some conferences are worth it, and some aren’t. After a year on the road, I can unequivocally say that the TSI investor and TSI commercial symposia were in the top percent of the best conferences we have attended. The dedicated one-on-one time with each participant created deeper relationships and insights. Being able to present to the group also facilitated these conversations and saved time. The follow-up was also very high. I highly, highly, highly recommend – and we will be repeating. Nathaniel Marcus CEO, OccasionGenius
I wanted to let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed the TSI Travel Tech Investment Symposium. The format worked well, provided a lot of opportunities to meet and was most of all productive. We have secured a small investment from one of the angel investors which we already received. I believe there may be two to three more investments to come from the group as well as potential business development and partnership deals. Jeff Cohen, CEO MyLifeID
TSI believes impactful growth in the travel industry will come from these three trends in 2020.
#1 Direct-to-Supplier / Supplier-Direct – This is the #1 current trend in the travel industry. The trend is impacting every travel vertical from hotels, airlines, to OTAs. Travel suppliers are building new technology stacks, integrating emerging technologies and developing marketing campaigns to sell directly to end customers. The direct to supplier trend has momentum in the B2B travel technology space as emerging travel technology companies develop new distribution systems and processes to help suppliers go direct through APIs and MicroServices.
Use Case: Airlines (American Airlines), GDSs (Amadeus), Aggregators (Airlines Technology) are all building a supplier direct airline distribution system using NDC.
#2 Platforms & Marketplaces – The largest travel companies, both in leisure and business travel are launching platform business models facilitating marketplaces for the buying and selling of new products, services and technology.
Use Case: BCD Travel, a large travel management company has launched three platforms.
SolutionSource® a marketplace platform enables 3rd party emerging travel tech companies to license their APIs and MicroServices to BCD Travel’s corporate and enterprise customers.
Connect, is a communications platform for BCD Travel corporate customers to engage with BCD Travel and other corporates in the BCD Travel network.
Developer Hub the 3rd platform is an API platform for 3rd party developers to access BCD Travel’s APIs.
#3 APIs, MicroServices & Connectivity – Software is eating the world and APIs are eating software. APIs are the delivery system that feed the platforms and marketplaces with data and enables travel suppliers the ability to go direct. MicroServices can be viewed as software products and services that integrate easily into platform and marketplace architecture, adding value for the platform owner and it’s customers. Facilitating connectivity is the name of the game.
Use Case: UnDelay’s Flight Prediction API monitors 200 airlines flight status, helping airport staff, flight crews and travelers.
Use Case: Trip Ninja, a MicroService search technology, helps OTAs and Offline Agencies increase revenue on multi-city bookings with your existing data sources.
Use Case:Traxo Connect a connectivity marketplace, helps 3rd party business travel service providers connect directly with travel supplier data.
Request to attend the TSI Travel API & MicroServices Tech Symposium on Jan 7, 2020 and meet 30 travel companies looking to license their API & MicroServices. Meet 1:1 with Amadeus, Airlines Technology, BCD Travel, UnDelay, Trip Ninja, Traxo and more.
Eddy Travels is a travel tech startup developing AI-powered travel assistants with custom natural language processing (NLP) for travel context. Travel companies can white label the Eddy Travels digital assistant to generate additional sales and increase the ROI from social media.
With the rise of social networks, people are increasingly turning to social media to research and shop. Customers expect businesses to respond and provide services wherever they have a digital presence. Unfortunately, many companies are failing to respond to customers’ questions and requests. This results in bad customer experience and lost business opportunities. To solve that, Eddy Travels has built an AI-powered travel assistant that helps travel companies automate customer interactions on chat apps and increase sales.
The Eddy Travels assistant uses a cutting-edge natural language processing system that is specifically tailored for the travel industry. It can effectively process users’ messages, identify the right travel intents, and respond with relevant information in seconds. Eddy Travels also works with voice message processing so customers could send audio messages too.
The white-labeled assistant can be integrated into any popular messaging app such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WhatsApp, and Slack. Also into chat widgets on websites and mobile apps. As a result, companies can effectively scale their communication with customers on multiple platforms, lower operational costs, increase sales, and improve customer loyalty.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the natural language processing system, the startup released the Eddy Travels AI travel assistant to the public. Over 12,000 travelers from around the world now make more than 4,000 flights and accommodation searches every month. The search is powered by a partnership with Skyscanner, one of the leading metasearch companies in the world. Try planning your next trip with the Eddy Travels AI assistant by visiting www.eddytravels.com.
We are pleased to announce our 2nd, Travel API & Micro-Services Tech Symposium, part of the TSI Innovation Program. We bring together the leading TMC’s, Corporate Travel Managers, GDSs, Airlines, Hotels, OTA’s, Travel Platforms, Marketplaces and vetted global B2B travel technology startups looking to pilot and license their business travel technology. Please go here to Request an Invite to attend.
1:1 Meetings between the larger travel companies (buyers of travel technology) and the travel technology startups (sellers of travel technology) are the core focus for relationship building and the piloting and licensing of technology. See the 1:1 Meetings in action below.
TSI Symposium Testimonials:
The TSI Travel Tech Symposium was a great success for 3Victors, a travel data service startup. The one day networking event generated multiple partnership opportunities for the near term, and many new relationships for the future. We’ll definitely be back! Ken Cannon, 3Victors
One of the most well organized and useful events in the travel industry. The meetings were scheduled according to interests and coupled with breaks, allowed ample opportunity to network with prospects in understanding their needs. The presentations were also very insightful. Trideep Aggarwal, TWAI
What a great opportunity to connect others in the Travel Technology space. Great event, and thanks for the invite! Mark Abdoo, Cornerstone Information Systems
After attending several travel congresses and shows, I can definitively say that the TSI Symposium was one of the most amazing opportunities to do networking with industry leaders. The format of the event and relevance of the speakers that came from these industry leaders led to more meaningful conversation and to more qualified follow-ups. Guilherme Conde, Around Vector
I also want to quickly take this opportunity to say thanks for organizing the event last week. It was the first time that I took our milez.biz project to an event like this and I thought it was absolutely worth it. I actually have a follow-up call scheduled w/ Amadeus this afternoon. Philipp Gysling, Milez.Biz
This was a fantastic event and amazing reason to travel to Miami. I am confident any travel technology or service provider could benefit from attending this show. Mike Murdock, World2Meet
The Symposium was a great event. Being able to meet so many interesting startups in an efficient and informative way is an unusual and very beneficial opportunity. Dan Reagan, Atlas Travel
It was just the right format for sharing valuable information and making meaningful contacts. Rastko Ilic, Thomalex
It is very effective. One place to meet so many potential significant players in one place. For us it is good to plant the seed in startup companies to focus on their innovations and let us do the plumbing underneath like we do it for so many big players. Michael Strauss, PASS Travel Solutions
Small, but comprehensive, right people with the right mindset. Stefan Wagner, metaplanner
How often does a travel start-up ever get the opportunity to pitch to over half the business travel market in one room? The TSI Symposium managed this, and what made it extra special was the opportunity to have face-to-face meetings which gave me the chance to get to know these travel industry leaders as individuals. John Lee, CultureMee
Compared to any of bigger conferences I attended, this event made it easy to engage and to get plenty of interesting insider information. Christof Baumbach, Wingz
Relevant topics, excellent speakers and the agenda moved along like clockwork. Good mix of attendees – corporates and startups, with a good chance to establish contacts. Madhusudhan Jain, Yappes
