The ACTE Angel Investors Lounge will, for the first time, be represented on the judging panel at the WIT Start-Up Pitch at the WIT Bootcamp taking place on Oct 15 in Singapore.

Kurt Knackstedt (right), the Asia Region Board Representative for ACTE for 2012-2014, will join a panel of judges, chaired by Fritz Demopoulos, CEO, Queen’s Road Capital and Kei Shibata, CEO, Venture Republic in selecting the winning travel start-up in the annual competition held by WIT to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in travel.

“Corporate travel is an area that’s being disrupted as much as leisure and is ripe for innovation and we are pleased to have ACTE come onboard as partners to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in travel,” said Yeoh Siew Hoon, editor and founder of Web In Travel. 

ACTE, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which held its 2012 Asia Education Conference in Singapore recently, is cognizant that corporate travel is facing massive changes as technology becomes more personal, more travellers move online to book and low cost airlines change travel patterns and behaviour.

In 10 years time, it is projected that half of all air seats in Asia will be low cost. “How can that not change corporate travel?” said Knackstedt, who is also Category Lead, Global Sourcing Services, Travel and Expense Management for Rio Tinto Group.

The Angel Investors Lounge is a partnership between ACTE and Solidea Capital, the sister company of Acquis Consulting Group, that provides entrepreneurs with access to a network of expertise and resources required to turn a good idea into a successful venture.

ACTE's executive director Ron DiLeo said, “The genesis for the idea behind the Lounge stems from watching associations and publications recognizing entrepreneurs and giving them awards but not doing anything to help them actualize their ideas. The biggest problem we see in the corporate travel arena is a lack of progression beyond technology development and we believe this is the result of people not knowing how to advance their business beyond plans or just talking about what they would like to do.  As a result there are solutions out there for problems that haven't even presented themselves yet.”

Full story:

www.webintravel.com//news/corporate-travel-ripe-for-innovation-acte-angel-investors-joins-wit-startup-pitch_3358