Platforms (open sales and distribution systems) and the API (application programming interface) are driving the next phase of growth in the travel industry.
Leading travel companies are transitioning from building their own new products and services to building software platforms that enable travel startups and 3rd party companies to connect and tap into their sales systems.
Platforms are helping travel companies sell more than they could by selling on their own.
In the past, if a travel company wanted to expand their business the option was either to build the product or acquire it by buying another travel company. A more efficient, quicker, and possibly more profitable model is to license 3rd party products and services through APIs. In this new evolving business model, your company can be generating revenue in a few weeks to one–two months.
Platforms and APIs speed up the sales process, enabling the platform company to drive growth quicker with less risk.
Platforms are being conceived right now by the world's most trusted travel brands and executed by the smartest players in the room.
HotelTonight
Sam Shank, the founder of HotelTonight, gave a recent talk at Phocuswright. His vision for the perfect mobile hotel booking experience looks like a travel platform with multiple partners integrating into the platform with their APIs. I can't speak for Sam, but don't think for a moment that he and his team are not thinking about how HotelTonight can become a platform to provide a hotel guest a total end-to-end customer experience.
Concur
I recently attended Concur's DevCon conference in San Francisco. Steve Singh's presentation was an eye opener. The depth of his thinking and the extent of how big Concur's platform can really be was truly amazing.
Concur has an open platform focused on transforming the travel industry and providing value to business travelers. Travel companies that have products and services that business travelers would be interested in can get distribution for their product through the App Center. Concur is facilitating the ability for 3rd party travel companies to plugin and gain access to Concur's 25M business travelers.
Sabre Dev Studio
Sabre's Dev Studio is commercializing their technology by providing their APIs to get distributed and integrated into 3rd party travel businesses and new products and services. The Sabre Red App Centre is a B2B marketplace that enables travel companies around the world to make their apps available to travel agents. This is a similar model to Concur's App Center.
Other Players
FlitWays— one of the Travel Startup Incubator portfolio companies — has an API to provide ground transportation services for travel companies that want to integrate transportation for their customers. FlitWays can be integrated into HomeAway, HotelTonight, and Sabre's Dev Studio.
HomeAway recently announced that they are integrating Gogobot, Uber, and Instacart into the vacation rental marketplace to improve the guest experience and provide multiple services for vacationers. From the sounds of this announcement, it seems as if HomeAway is moving towards developing a platform.
Proxce — another Travel Startup Incubator portfolio company — will have an API coming out of Beta testing that will enable OTAs and travel companies to provide their guests the ability to automatically check in to hotels.
TravelStartups.co Platform Vision
At TravelStartups.co we are moving towards building a global platform for travel startups to raise seed capital, get advisement and mentoring, do business development deals, network with founders, acquire follow-on capital and pitch to investors. We envision one day the ability for travel startups to plugin to our platform to help build their business from idea to launch to IPO.