Sharing The Travel Industry's latest Technology
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
Update:
It is refreshing to see the updates to content, UGC and usability on Nile Guide. Josh Steinetz is heading in the right direction, the guides that can be dynamically generated are a great merger of oldword guides meet custom travel planning. I will be using this site.
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
UPDATE
Worldmate has just presented their live software, it looks to have a great user interface, and a impressive feature set. I am happy to see the progress in such a short time period. Good job guys!
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
July 17, 2008 - 10:15 pm
Bonjour Phil,
Can you tell me the process and keys things to participate for PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit
For next PCW in 2009, my cie will have a strong and innovate ecartography engine for the etourism industry.
I will tell you and show you something at PCW in November
BTW, I vote an average 9,99 ;-)
Best regards
Claude
July 20, 2008 - 11:34 pm
Regarding WorldMate – you totaly skipped the new generation – WorldMate Live, which holds services you can’t enjoy anywhere else.
learn more at http://www.wmlive.com
July 21, 2008 - 9:55 am
Hi Claude,
The process for participating in the Travel Innovation Summit was very straight forward. The Rezgo team contacted PhoCusWright, and submitted a written overview of what made our product unique, innovative and why it would be a good competition.
We were then given a live interview and justified everything we talked about in the initial letter.
I think the key is to know your product and know how it will shake the industry!
I am interested in the ecartography engine, lets talk!
Thanks for the 9.99 ;)
Phil
July 21, 2008 - 10:01 am
Hi Daphna,
Thanks for bringing WordMate Live to my attention, there are other features that I most have missed. Looks good, I look forward to hearing about it at PCW 08.
Cheers,
Phil
July 25, 2008 - 1:11 pm
Bonjour Phil,
Thanks for the tips about Travel Innovation Summit
We will not be full operationnal for november, I think for ITB will be good
I will send you soon (and Stephen also) a mail about our ecartography engine technology and what whe think about this application in the etourism industry.
BTW, what about PCW bloggers summit news and tipsfromthelist.com project ?
just to tell you, Vincent, the french blogger is coming out the etourism industry and will not handle any more is great blog ;-(
and me, I think to switch definitively from Les Explorers to my personal blog hotelitour, who is run by Wordpress and where I am at home an I have more space to express my self with the tool and other…..
Best regards from sunny Marseille >> sunday >> scuba-diving ;-)
Claude
August 26, 2008 - 4:23 pm
hi Phil,
looking forward to seeing you at PCW. Rest assured, we’ll be integrating transactions along with advertising shortly — hello revenue model!
August 29, 2008 - 9:34 am
Hi Josh,
It will be good to see you at PCW again. Looking forward to your future upgrades, will they be showcased at TIS?
Cheers,
Phil
October 25, 2008 - 5:23 am
There aren’t any transactional features at this stage but British Airways recently launched this online community that twins New York with London and is fed by a blog network. It’s a social utility serving a niche (admittedly, a *mega*-niche) rather than a social networking site. Very pretty and great content (I would say that, my agency designed it), plus a buzz-based algorithm tracking user behaviour and sentiment, and dynamic ‘charts’ of the best places in both cities. Bloggers and online communities are the real local experts – it’s what many of us now look for when researching a destination or trip – authentic, intelligent recommendations, filtered out from the wall of noise, spam-sites and search cheating. Good relevant blogs (and the most relevant pages within them) are particularly hard to find. Have a look at http://www.metrotwin.com and I’d love to know what you think. I think it’s interesting to see big companies doing little start-ups like this.
October 25, 2008 - 12:14 pm
Thanks Tim,
Will you be at the travel innovation summit at PhoCusWright this year? There are many exciting products and companies, well worth the visit from the UK.
Phil