The Colorado startup community crowded into an upscale facility in downtown Denver this month, excited to witness four innovative startups make their final product pitches during the culminating Demo Day event.
The event marked the conclusion of the most-recent 16-week accelerator program hosted by Travelport Labs.
NB: This article is the final part of a series of sponsored content by Travelport Labs.
Travelport Labs is a travel-focused startup accelerator launched last year by Travelport, a global travel commerce platform.
Travelport started the accelerator program as a way to encourage and support entrepreneurs and early-stage companies working on emerging travel technologies and business models.
Nathan Bobbin, senior director of product innovation and founder of the accelerator program, says:
"Travelport’s business is about connecting a world of travel choice through the breadth of our content and connectivity.
"The accelerator program supports this goal by identifying innovative entrepreneurs who may have identified new ways to deliver content or connect travelers and helping their companies learn and adopt best practices to achieve product-market fit.
“Starting-up a new business is difficult and inherently risky, but the people who choose this path have a particular energy that is great to bring into a large established enterprise like Travelport.
"It's an honor to help these companies on their journey by providing them with deep travel domain expertise from across Travelport’s enterprise.”
This is the second graduating cohort from the Travelport Labs program. As with the last cohort, the teams coming out of the program span the spectrum of travel, with one landing through a pivot in a market that is only tangentially related to travel.
Wolo
Wolo entered the program as a B2C "online bucket list community" company, but pivoted at the halfway point to a B2B company aimed at leveraging the power of bucket lists to improve corporate rewards and incentives.
Founders Ray Collins and Mike Swisher had just left another large accelerator program in South America where the team was one of more than a hundred in the program.
Collins and Swisher initially were hesitant about joining the newer, smaller Travelport Labs accelerator. However, the pair quickly appreciated the dedicated coaching and mentors the Travelport Labs program provided. And they loved Denver, so much so that the team has now decided to relocate and base their business in the city.
Collins says:
"Travelport Labs has been phenomenal! It has a network of hundreds of experienced mentors across every industry. The dedicated team of coaches are experts in Lean and Agile startup methodologies among many other aspects of building a techy travel startup.
"Joining the program has proved to be the best decision we've made.”
Stay22
Stay22 had one of the better traction stories in a cohort that had surprising traction - the company made $25,000 in revenue the week before Demo Day.
The startup provides event managers with a snippet of javascript that can be embedded in their website in order to provide event attendees with lodging options in a slick map-based interface.
For co-founder and CEO Hamed Al-Khabaz, the Travelport program was highly instructional, significantly improving the trajectory of his company.
He says:
"Travelport Labs was a huge advantage for Stay22. Travel is tricky. Being surrounded with other startups and mentors who are in the same industry helped us avoid common pitfalls that other travel startups would otherwise not be aware of.
"That, and the excellent staff, pressuring us everyday to push and truly deliver acceleration, help us make a year of progress in just these 16 weeks.”
StayDelightful (formerly AgentAvery)
StayDelightful also pivoted during the program. The company joined the accelerator as an AI/messaging-based customer acquisition and engagement tool for travel agents, but pivoted to the hotel market, leveraging their technology platform to help hotels delight guests while increasing engagement, loyalty, and driving positive online reviews.
StayDelightful leverages instant messaging to engage guests from reservation through to checkout, impacting each key interaction by providing guests with the information they need, when they need it, to ensure a positive stay. It then uses that conversational data to create actionable intelligence for the hotel.
Jonathan Lee, CEO and Founder, emphasized the importance of the strong mentor network that surrounds the Travelport Labs Accelerator.
"Starting a scalable business in travel is tough work. Travelport Labs Accelerator gave us access to a mentor network in the travel space of unparalleled calibre.
"Pivoting in the middle of the accelerator was a daunting task. But the mentors helped steer us in the right direction with their constant feedback.
"Just as anyone seriously contemplating becoming a top chef would attend a culinary school, all travel startup founders should consider taking advantage of Travelport’s domain expertise to give their company an unfair advantage of competition."
Cape
Mobile startup, Cape, came to the Travelport Labs Accelerator program by winning a pitch competition in Singapore.
Based in the Philippines, Cape enables everyone to fly like an airline employee by making standby seats available to the public at steeply discounted rates.
Everyone wins in the Cape business model: airlines pick up a channel for unsold inventory that is not cannabalizing to existing channels, and consumers who are willing to fly under standby terms save hundreds of dollars on flights they would otherwise not be able to afford.
CEO and Founder Lyle Jover knew that gaining the deep travel domain expertise of a partner like Travelport would greatly benefit his startup.
"Working with Travelport Labs turned out to be a pivotal move for us. As a startup, and given the scale of what we’re trying to achieve, they helped us understand and execute a lot of critical aspects that led our company to where we are today.
"The focus on the travel vertical gave us a lot of deep insights and knowledge that we would not have learned otherwise, and which proved to be extremely important in this critical stage of our company."
Cape demonstrated strong traction coming out of the program, having developed a waiting list for its mobile app of more than 15,000 consumers and inked supply deals with two airlines, Philippines and Nature Air.
Travelport understands the impact startups are having in the travel industry and is helping them succeed.
Travelport Labs Accelerator alumni such as PicThrive, Tagible, Asemblr and Unboundly are gaining traction and developing an excellent reputation in the industry.
This reflects well on Travelport's efforts, with more positive results expected from this current graduating class.
The next Travelport Labs accelerator cohort kicks off in July. Travelport Labs is currently accepting applications through May 12. Apply here.
NB: This article by Travelport Labs appears here as part of Tnooz’s sponsored content initiative.
NB2: This is final part of a four-part series aimed at following startups through the Travelport accelerator and uncovering the experiences of all parties.
Links to the previous articles follow:
From startup to business poised for growth - tracking graduates of the Travelport Labs AcceleratorWhy Travelport launched its travel startup acceleratorTravel startups find a place to grow at Travelport Labs Accelerator