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Travel Innovation Summit - The Battle For Centre Stage

We are really excited to be participating in the PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit (PCW TIS). Rezgo has come a long way since its inception, we are gaining attention, building strategic partnerships and have a robust feature set that really sets us apart from our direct competition. Well I may be a little biased, and I realize that our competition at PCW TIS is not direct market competition. As we are competing for innovation and ingenuity, I thought I would do a brief review of the presenters at PCW TIS.

This is not a complete list, and I will be adding others as more information is made available. I will be giving an overview of what they do and a rating based on potential to shake the industry, how innovative they are, and the likelihood of success. So here is a brief rundown of the presenting companies at PCW TIS thus far.

Cadabra

Overview: Looks to be a one stop shop for those going to New Zealand. PRO: You can generate a customized itinerary including hotel and activities and even book all items through their website. CON: Currently only in New Zealand, search for hotel etc can not be filtered and organized (price, stars etc)

Site look: 8/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10

Innovation: 7/10

Success: 8/10

ekit

Overview: Their primary business is selling of SIM and calling cards for travelers, as an ancillary bonus, users are given a travel journal and a secure travel vault for storing important documents digitally. PRO: Free add-ons to a comodity type product. The live tracking features a really cool. CON: Not really an innovative product, there are numerous free mobile blogging and document storage platforms on the market.

Site look: 4/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 5/10

Innovation: 6/10

Success: 6/10

Innovata LLC

Overview: Innovata is positioning itself as the leader in Airline timedable data managing, hosting, and reporting. They have a number of services ranging from Data Licencing, Hosted Services to Analitical Services. PRO: Seem to have multiple strong revenue streams. CON: I am not sure how scalable this business platform is.

Site look: 7/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10

Innovation: 6/10

Success: 8/10

NileGuide.com

Overview: I met the CEO Josh Steinitz at last years PCW, he has made NileGuide a shaker for the trip planning and UGC review sector. PRO NileGuide has great filtering features to help find hotels and activities that interest you, and they have a growing database of product. CON: Lack of transaction capabilities limits their revenue potential.

Site look: 9/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 8/10

Innovation: 7/10

Success: 7/10

Roundtrip Systems

Overview: Roundtip Systems seems to be giving emails a dynamic booking capability. PRO: Piggy backing emails for booking, saves time, widely used technology. CON: Product bookings lack scope and range of options and media.

Site look: 5/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10

Innovation: 7/10

Success: 7/10

WorldMate Inc.

Overview: World Mate offers mobile information for traveler. Their free product has weather, currency and time information, and their subscription service has flight information. PRO: Nice interface, free account is a good incentive to use. CON: With the proliferation of mobile information, all of their data can be accessed through traditional websites.

Site look: 8/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10

Innovation: 7/10

Success: 7/10

Yapta.

Overview: I met Tom Romary and the Yapta Team last year at PCW. These guys have a great product for the american traveller. They track flight pricing for consumers and can help consumers get reemburced if the price of a flight changes before they fly. PRO: Huge market potential. CON: I hope they have a solid revenue model

Site look: 8/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 9/10

Innovation: 9/10

Success: 8/10

Rezgo

Overview: Well I can’t really be objective here, but I think we have a great product! So feel free to go to Rezgo.com and leave a comment on how you would rate Rezgo:

Site look: ?/10

Potential to Shake Industry: ?/10

Innovation: ?/10

Success: 11;) /10

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The 3 Ingredients For The Perfect Travel Storm

According to Sebastian Junger, a perfect storm is when many smaller effects come together to have a greater effect then the effects individual elements. Wikipedia states that it has grown to mean “any event where a combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically.”

What does this mean for the travel industry? What events are coming together to facilitate drastic changes?

These are questions that PhoCusWright will be addressing at their annual conference, this year in Hollywood. They are focusing on the new ways that consumers Search, Shop, and Buy travel products through the Internet. This started my thinking, and here are some areas that I have noticed that will be the big movers of this perfect storm:

1. Semantic Travel - With everyone and their dog online, it is becoming increasingly hard to make travel booking  decisions due to the sheer magnitude of content on the web. Semantic structuring of search attempts to disseminate all of the information, pricing and reviews that are the most relevant for your interests and present it to you in a concise format. Look at sites like UpTake.com for an example of where semantic vertical search is today. This will be the new Meta-search.

2. Google - With integrated flight search that has preferential placement of OTAs, Google is moving closer and closer to fully marketing travel products. They have out maneuvered Microsoft on the Yahoo bid, and now own online advertising, it is fair to anticipate some major shake ups from this daring company.

3. Free - Chris Anderson is coming out with another industry shaking book, Free!. He uses Google, Craigslist and Wikipedia as cases for the new economics of the Internet. Apply these same tenets to the Travel Industry and some interesting things will happen. Rezgo, (our product) for example has just released a Free Online booking solution for Tour and Activity suppliers, this has the potential to enable all of the longtail suppliers to sell their products through our partner OTAs as well as their own site. There is a lot of potential here.

What do you think will contribute to this new Perfect Storm for travel?

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3.5 (1 person)

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