A recurring theme at ITB 2015 is related to the travel sector’s slowness to embrace the mobile market and adapt to the habits of the increasingly connected traveler of today.
In a special panel on Friday, five budding innovators put forth their arguments for why this should change, with each delivering a seven-minute sales pitch on how their own respective tech solutions could help bridge the gap.
Panelists included (from left to right): Eddie Robb (CEO, Make it social), Samuel Aloni (Technical Product Manager, Allryder), Andre Kiwitz (Founder, trip.me), Blaz Jemc (Chief operating officer, TravelStarter) and Pierre Barnier (Chief commercial officer, Pierre Barnier).
TravelStarter " ‘Kickstarter for travel’
“So, what’s the problem that local entrepreneurs are facing?” chief operating officer of TravelStarter, Blaz Jemc, asked. “They want to open up hostels, something new and local. But they don’t have the money, they can’t get out there, spread the idea. So, we decided to create a platform that can solve that problem through crowdfunding.”
Launching two months ago, TravelStarter, connects travelers with local entrepreneurs through a rewards-based crowd-funding platform. Once the business is on its feet, the entrepreneur repays investors through a rewards-based system.
TravelStarter’s target market is not just the fresh-faced entrepreneur, however.
“Actually, most of our current clients are existing businesses that want to operate something new,” Jemc added. “And we know businesses need to raise some money and they can’t always go for a loan to the bank… It’s also a new marketing channel for them. Instead of doing a Facebook contest, businesses can crowd-fund, and get their own customers involved.”
Sepage " ‘We read web to understand destinations’
As an average traveler visits dozen of online platforms while planning a trip, the result is they “get lost on websites,” said chief commercial officer of Parisian start-up Sepage, Pierre Barnier. “There is a multitude of information and no one to guide them.”
The goal of Sepage is to help travel brands understand their customers needs by using algorithms developed to read an anonymous user’s online browsing habits.
“We have created amazing technology that we believe can facilitate the communication between humans and machines,” Barnier said.
“Our vision is to transform the shopping experience and internet for travelers. We want to reintroduce the relationship between the brand and the customer that existed before the Internet, and was damaged,” he added.
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