Roadmap, a new business-to-business itinerary management mobile application, is preparing for release in the US in a matter of months.
The company (also called Roadmap) has grown out of Sound of Data Travel which was formerly part of Sound of Data, a company specialising in data services for businesses.
Chief executive Jeroen van Velzen says the decision to form Roadmap was made because the company realised the potential for the technology it had developed.
The app is built around the traveller's trip timeline including flight details, car rental and hotel reservations, maps, transport options and local information. The latest updates are also fed into the app.
Van Velzen says Roadmap wants to offer companies a white-label app which simulates a consumer service. He says that working with online travel agencies highlighted frequent fliers as the group most likely to use these sorts of apps but with OTAs the priority is often put on improving conversion.
"A big industry problem is that it is a transaction business not a relationship business but we still believe it is an interesting opportunity just by the fact that it is not happening."
Roadmap will continue to serve the OTA market through a branded mobile service with the aim of upselling travel elements.
Meanwhile, the company is approaching the corporate market from two avenues. It wants to target mid-sized travel management companies who don't have in-house technology and often rely on existing mobile products and services from the GDSs or other third-party suppliers.
Van Velzen says these TMCs need to decide whether they're happy to hand off customers to third parties or want to own them themselves.
The second segment Roadmap is going after is enterprise travel apps. The company sees opportunity for large businesses with a young work force that is demanding something different than a travel program managed by cost.
He also hopes the app, once fully developed, may also be able to serve the leisure market, working on the same timeline principle.
Each app will be customised to the company and travellers using it according to language, travel program, safety elements and other useful information.
The Roadmap app is scheduled for release in the summer when the company will start migrating existing Sound of Data Travel customers to it on release.