Bacarai - one of PhocusWire's Hot 25 Startups for 2020 - has developed a new API service that connects COVID-19 statistics to airport
codes and hotel locations so that airlines, hotels and online travel agencies can display
the data within their shopping workflows.
Bacarai
co-founder and COO Kenny Totten says the idea for the SmartCheck product developed
out of the realization that the COVID-19 crisis has caused people to consider a
destination’s safety in trip planning, and many of the public sites consumers
may access on their own could cause more fear or confusion than is warranted.
“Travel
shopping has changed, and brands are going to have to show more data or travelers will search for it on their own,” Totten says.
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“And
the Johns Hopkins dashboard or other COVID tracking sites are designed to give total
number of cases, but they are not really contextual.”
SmartCheck
provides statistics such as total cases, new cases by day, total tests, number of
people recovered and number of deaths, with data pulled from publicly available
sources around the world. Airlines, hotels and OTAs can access SmartCheck via
an API and then customize how the information is displayed on their sites – for
example showing the trend of new cases on a line graph.
Totten
says his team is also developing a Javascript widget that can be used by companies that do not have an internal team to customize the display.
For now
travel brands can contact Bacarai to get access to SmartCheck. By May 30 the product
will be available through a self-service platform.
Bacarai
is part of the current SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco, a B2B travel technology
accelerator, and Totten says some of the SAP Concur teams are now looking at
SmartCheck.