Four of the best travel innovators and four more to believe in by can't
The PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit is over.
Of the 33 presenters, 4 will be chosen to go through to the Centre Stage presentation and compete for the winner’s trophy.
Here is my pick for the top four (and four more I wanted to pick but did not hear enough to know).
My top four for the Travel Innovation Summit
Dapper:
My EveryYou concept is all about the ability to target recommendations not just to the individual but each version of the individual (ie business traveller Tim, family traveller Tim, buddy traveller Tim).
I have focused in my posts on the data analysis and management side. Dapper is a system that can take a website and in moments generate dynamic deal and content widgets.
Allows a booking site to take their thousands of individual pages and generate practically unlimited number of dynamic deal and promotional options.
If you combine this with data analysis of consumer behaviour then you have the founding pieces of EveryYou;
Tourabout:
A startup on the other side of Sydney Harbour from my home so of course they make my top four.
Boxing kangaroo loyalties aside, Tourabout have built a GDS like product for tour operator and destination product and combined it with social media and search technologies.
Gives consumer access to a product set that was previously hidden on the brochure wall of a hotel, trapped in the mind of local tour agents and hidden within blog posts.
Consumers can now search, book and share tour operator product and gain from the expertise of destination services provider;
X+1:
Another site that gets my vote because of its tie to targeted content and recommendations (EveryYou again).
Allows content and deals to be auto generated from existing pages and targeted at individual consumers.
Like my comments for Dapper – I love the layout but will need to know about the data analysis side; and
Traveltainment:
Product from Amadeus that changes dynamic packaging search.
Old school dynamic packaging is matching discounted net air and hotel/car inventory into a single price.
Consumer gets savings, suppliers keeps individual prices hidden to protect transparent priced products.
Traveltainment does packaging but has changed the search process to allow consumers to search based on experience and desires rather than just destination.
The addition of multi-dimensional search parameters outside of date and destination is an overdue innovation in package search.
I wanted to believe in the following but something stopped me. These are products that I would have put in my top four but something held me back
Localyte:
It claims 40,000 individual contributors – self appointed local experts – providing content and direct response answers to questions on what to do in a location.
Mentioned 700,000 reviews and 20 million words per month.
An amazing amount of content and we were further gob-smacked by this presentation as none of us in the blogger pit had heard of these guys.
But I am held back from voting for them because I have concerns about the accreditation of the local and how to be sure they are not a rep of a particular travel product and therefore biased;
EveryTrail:
Everyone is telling me that this was amazing presentation. Unfortunately I missed it. Shame on me but that is why I can’t vote for them;
iPerception:
I am a data nut. I joined the online travel industry because of a love of finding and accessing data about customers that could be used to be a better marketer, seller and expert.
iPerception showed us an amazing looking dashboard for analysing consumer shopping and booking behaviour.
Combining attitudinal research with behavioural data. Unfortunately the presentation spent too much time introducing the idea and only moments showing the interface.
Half way through the presentation I tweeted “I want to like this because I love data - but am not getting it”. Three mins later but with only 1 minute to go I tweeted “ok - now almost getting it. Data that shows me customers did not book as saw a price change. That I get”.
A better presentation with more showing the data could have resulted in iPerceptions getting my vote; and
Translations.com:
Showed an automated translation product. At the end of the presentation they were able – within seconds – to translate a randomly selected web page and translate it into Chinese.
Unfortunately translation is all about accuracy and context.
It is impossible to just Translatins.com just on speed of translation.
Without seeing accuracy in the product I can’t vote for it.
Edward Hasbrouck made the great point that it would have been better to take a Chinese site and insta-translate it into English with a comparison to Google translate.
The actual finalists will be announced later today.
NB: Full
The PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit is over.
Of the 33 presenters, four will be chosen to go through to the Center Stage presentation and compete for the winner’s trophy.
Here is my pick for the top four (and four more I wanted to pick but did not hear enough to know).
Dapper:
My EveryYou concept is all about the ability to target recommendations not just to the individual but each version of the individual (ie business traveller Tim, family traveller Tim, buddy traveller Tim).
I have focused in my posts on the data analysis and management side. Dapper is a system that can take a website and in moments generate dynamic deal and content widgets.
Allows a booking site to take their thousands of individual pages and generate practically unlimited number of dynamic deal and promotional options.
If you combine this with data analysis of consumer behaviour then you have the founding pieces of EveryYou;
Tourabout:
A startup on the other side of Sydney Harbour from my home so of course they make my top four.
Boxing kangaroo loyalties aside, Tourabout have built a GDS-like product for tour operator and destination product and combined it with social media and search technologies.
Gives consumer access to a product set that was previously hidden on the brochure wall of a hotel, trapped in the mind of local tour agents and hidden within blog posts.
Consumers can now search, book and share tour operator product and gain from the expertise of destination services provider;
X+1:
Another site that gets my vote because of its tie to targeted content and recommendations (EveryYou again).
Allows content and deals to be auto generated from existing pages and targeted at individual consumers.
Like my comments for Dapper – I love the layout but will need to know about the data analysis side; and
Traveltainment:
Product from Amadeus that changes dynamic packaging search.
Old school dynamic packaging is matching discounted net air and hotel/car inventory into a single price.
Consumer gets savings, suppliers keeps individual prices hidden to protect transparent priced products.
Traveltainment does packaging but has changed the search process to allow consumers to search based on experience and desires rather than just destination.
The addition of multi-dimensional search parameters outside of date and destination is an overdue innovation in package search.
Nevertheless...
I wanted to believe in the following but something stopped me. These are products that I would have put in my top four but something held me back
Localyte:
It claims 40,000 individual contributors – self appointed local experts – providing content and direct response answers to questions on what to do in a location.
Mentioned 700,000 reviews and 20 million words per month.
An amazing amount of content and we were further gob-smacked by this presentation as none of us in the blogger pit had heard of these guys.
But I am held back from voting for them because I have concerns about the accreditation of the local and how to be sure they are not a rep of a particular travel product and therefore biased;
EveryTrail:
Everyone is telling me that this was amazing presentation. Unfortunately I missed it. Shame on me but that is why I can’t vote for them.
iPerception:
I am a data nut. I joined the online travel industry because of a love of finding and accessing data about customers that could be used to be a better marketer, seller and expert.
iPerception showed us an amazing looking dashboard for analysing consumer shopping and booking behaviour.
Combining attitudinal research with behavioural data. Unfortunately the presentation spent too much time introducing the idea and only moments showing the interface.
Half way through the presentation I tweeted “I want to like this because I love data - but am not getting it”. Three mins later but with only 1 minute to go I tweeted “ok - now almost getting it. Data that shows me customers did not book as saw a price change. That I get”.
A better presentation with more showing the data could have resulted in iPerceptions getting my vote; and
Translations.com:
Showed an automated translation product. At the end of the presentation they were able – within seconds – to translate a randomly selected web page and translate it into Chinese.
Unfortunately translation is all about accuracy and context.
It is impossible to like Translations.com just on speed of translation. Without seeing accuracy in the product I can’t vote for it.
Edward Hasbrouck made the great point that it would have been better to take a Chinese site and insta-translate it into English with a comparison to Google translate.
The actual finalists will be announced later today.
NB: Full Tnooz summary of all presenters here.