Splitty Wins the Start-up Award at the EyeforTravel San Francisco Summit 2017.

Splitty won the Start-up Award at the EFT San Francisco Summit on Monday April 24th. The OTA splits your stay into multiple reservations for the same hotel to get you the lowest rate. Packetzoom a new technology protocol, speeding the load of a mobile application came in 2nd place. Both startups have been funded with millions in capital.

The EFT San Francisco Summit Startup Village kicked off on Monday April 24th. There were two panel sessions followed by 12 travel tech startups pitching for the awards. For the 3rd year in a row, EFT invited Travel Startups Incubator to be the moderator for the Startup Village and award sessions.

Panel #1: “Meet the Entrepreneurs,” succeeding in travel tech. We heard stories and great insights from Andy Peck, Founder and CEO Trusted Housesitters, Daria Rebenok, Founder and CEO Grabr.io, Snehal Shinde, CTO and Co-founder Mezi, Christian Wolters, North American MD Tour Radar, Bruce Rosenberg, COO HotelPlanner.

Panel #2: “Meet the Investors and Judges” for the Startup Pitch competition. Judges included Brian Harniman, Managing Director Brand New Matter, Tim Gunstone, Managing Director EyeforTravel, Bruce Rosenberg, Chief Operating Officer HotelPlanner, Jeena James, Global Head for Travel & Local, Apps, Business Development Google Play, Nancy Hayes, Managing Director Golden Seeds, Seth Rosenfield, Managing Director Petsky Prunier, Kurien Jacob, Principal, Highgate Ventures Highgate Hotels, llana Golan, CEO Golan Ventures, Amir Amidi, Managing Partner Plug and Play, George Arabian, Co-founder Steelhead Ventures, Nathan Bobbin, Sr. Director, Product Innovation Travelport, Utpal Kaul, Head New Products Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Matt Zito, Managing Partner Travel Startups Incubator.

A few takeaways from the conference included:

• There is now more investment capital, pre-seed stage, $25K-$100K in the startup ecosystem than ever before due to the corporate travel companies entering the market with new incubators, accelerators and venture arms.
• When raising capital at the Series A stage you should be asking for more than you really need.
• Building a B2B travel tech startup is much easier to gain traction and less competitive than B2C.
• Google is now the largest travel company in the world doing $12B in revenue in travel more than Priceline, Expedia and TripAdvisor.

Travel Technologies Wanted by Partners on the TravelStartups.net Deal Flow Platform

We have two new corporate partners on the TravelStartups.NET Deal Flow Platform looking for specific travel technology. If you have the following technologies please apply to the Deal Flow Platform so we can introduce you.

Airlines

Travel technology looking for: Data/Analytics for airlines to improve ancillary sales.

• How can an airline better steer its (ancillary) sales and improve upon it using analytics. Ancillaries (non-ticket revenue), these would be seat upgrades, baggage fees, on-board food, on-board services, à la carte features, commission-based products, frequent flier activities, pay-per-view entertainment, on-board shopping, internet gaming, car hire, hotel bookings.

Travel Agency’s

Travel technologies looking for: Multiple technologies for Travel Agency’s, Travel Agents.

CRM’s for Travel.

• Platforms that manage travel agency’s customers’ data to run campaigns, automate workflows.

Social Media Management specifically for Travel.

Booking tools.

• Focused on the travel advisor work flow.

Travel advisor sharing platform.

• Ways for inter-advisor and supplier collaboration to occur.

Group Travel Planning.

• Itinerary management and collaboration for group travel.

Trip Inspiration.

• Platforms or tools that are meant to give travelers trip suggestions based on customer preferences.