The Best Travel Startups Selected to Join Plug and Play’s Travel & Hospitality Innovation Platform
SUNNYVALE, CA (PRWEB) May 12, 2016 -- After sourcing over 800 startups, Plug and Play’s Travel & Hospitality Innovation Platform has accepted 18 startups into its first batch of the program. The current partners of the program include Carlson Wagonlit Travel, JetBlue, Lufthansa Innovation Hub, Panasonic Avionics, and Turkish Airlines. These corporate partners will work side by side with the startups for three months through mentor sessions, structured deal review, pilots, investments, and even acquisitions.
"By collaborating with our corporate partners and startups we’ll not only be able to move the needle in the industry, but truly set measurable milestones,” says Amir Amidi, Managing Partner of Plug and Play Travel.
This batch includes a range of innovative startups including:
30K adds the frequent flyer miles, upgradability, and status benefits (free luggage, lounge, priority, etc) to all flights in a flight search. Airfare shoppers get personalized flight results and travel suppliers achieve increased conversion and revenue while creating a big data basis for highly targeted ads. The technology has been shown to increase the rate of returning users by 23% and the company has signed 7 major travel players around the world.
Adventure Bucket List offers SaaS, enterprise solutions and GDS empowering tour operators to increase their profit and organization by bringing their businesses online. This allows travelers to book the top things to do in an area without spending the time and effort traditionally associated with it. Think of Sabre or Open Table but for tours and activities.
Angel.ai is a technology company focused on enabling the most natural UI for commerce, powered by artificial intelligence. Angel.ai's natural language, domain-specific messaging solution, built on an extensive data set of real conversations, is available natively or via any messaging platform.
App in the Air is a personal travel assistant that gives you one consistently great resource for the right information — no matter what airline you fly — as well as providing additional features that can save you time and money.
@YourGate is an in-airport personal shopping service. Travelers can open our app and shop at any retailer or restaurant, anywhere in the airport. Our uniformed staff will shop for your items, aggregate the items into one bag, and hand deliver those items to your departing gate.
Bellhop is a concierge platform that makes all entertainment (tours, activities, shows and events), food (restaurant reservations and delivery), and transportation (taxis and scheduled rides) services available on-demand globally. Travelers can truly feel like locals by having the same experience in their preferred language from anywhere in the world. Bellhop services can be accessed through: 1) a mobile SDK embedded within a hotel, vacation/short-term -rental marketplace, or travel management app (e.g. Marriott, Carlson Wagonlit, AirBnb), 2) RESTful APIs (e.g. Google Trips), and 3) chat-bot interface (e.g. boutique hotels without apps, or Amex concierge). The Bellhop app is also available for download through the app store. As the first "meta-service" transactional platform, Bellhop aggregates marketplaces in every geography by building partnerships and transacting with each through APIs, and taking a minimum 25% commission from every partner's cut of the gross transaction.
CleverTap integrates app analytics and mobile engagement. Engage and retain users through personalized Push, In-App, Email and Web messaging.
DUFL is a premium travel service- a personal valet that simplifies business travel by shipping, cleaning and storing your business attire. DUFL stores your clothing in your personal DUFL closet and allows you to virtually 'pack' by selecting your clothing items from within the app. Once you've schedule your trip, you'll travel bag free. Your freshly cleaned and neatly packed clothing will meet you at your specified destination. When you're ready to head home, schedule a pick up from the hotel and we'll clean your clothes and have them waiting in your virtual closet, ready for your next trip! Tired of traveling with your golf clubs, scuba gear, snowboard, bicycle, surfboard, fishing gear, etc.? Let DUFL do the heavy lifting! Send us your sports equipment and we'll clean, inventory, photograph, store it in your virtual closet and then ship it to your destination the next time you travel.
Georama is the world's first real-time virtual tour platform. Our vision is to help anyone travel anywhere in the world instantly. When people can’t go where they want to go, whether it be due to time, money, or physical limitations, Georama’s technology helps them go there virtually in real-time, via mobile and interactive live video tours. Our platform enables organizations and individuals to provide live mobile guided tours in HD quality with low latency and superior reliability from a smartphone, wearable camera, or 360˚ camera to viewers across any device who can interact in real-time for an authentic and personalized experience. Georama is currently used for campus tours, destination marketing, site inspections, and more, to enhance familiarization and help people make better decisions while saving time and money.
LocusLabs provides a market-leading indoor location platform enabling a new breed of enterprise applications across mobile, IoT, robotics and augmented reality.
Mozio is a mobility solution to enable travelers to find, book, and use whatever mode of local transportation they prefer. Whenever, wherever, however a traveler wants to go, Mozio is working to allow her to make it happen seamlessly, with a few clicks or taps on her phone.
Proxce provides a proximity based identity management solution. The system allows for a seamless association of different types of guest profiles with location and connected devices (IOT) thus enabling hotels to provide services like mobile check-in and keyless entry to guest rooms. Based in Silicon Valley, the company recently won the award for “The Most Innovative Startup” at the prestigious Phocuswright Conference and many hospitality groups use their system.
Rocketrip is the leading tech platform that reduces corporate travel expenses by letting employees keep half of what they save on their business trips. Venture-backed by several groups including Y Combinator, Canaan Partners, and Genacast Ventures, Rocketrip is the first commercially available travel solution to utilize the incentive-based approach to expense management pioneered at Google.
SeatWizer helps flight retailers to differentiate airline products visually by enabling travelers to try on their actual airline seat before they fly. By exploring the measured reality of airlines' differing seat sizes, travelers can easily compare comfort and cost to confidently make the quicker and smarter decisions made by more knowledgeable flyers. SeatWizer's visual interface is a natural fit for mobile devices and includes actionable insight from reviews of travelers identical to the user, increasing their certainty and ability to make a decision. SeatWizer customers convert the start of more travelers' journeys at a lower cost of acquisition, increase seat ancillary sales at higher prices, and build trust and loyalty from their users.
Springshot is the collaboration platform for travel operations. Its workforce management solution provides unique visibility and insight into airport and hospitality operations. Founded by former aviation operators, Springshot draws on decades of practical experience leading and engaging frontline service workers. This unique insight has allowed the company to build mobile applications tailored toward the demographics of today’s service workforce. Springshot empowers global travel brands to achieve financial and customer service goals. By sharing actionable data that identifies cost and time efficiencies, Springshot enables airlines and hotels to run better operations. By engaging their workers and celebrating the value of their individual contributions, Springshot increases pride and productivity.
Plug and Play Travel & Hospitality is an ecosystem connecting forward-thinking corporations and venture capitalists with startups that are developing technology that is redefining the world of travel. This Innovation Platform runs twice a year for 20-30 travel-focused startups that are chosen by Plug and Play’s venture team, VC partners, and corporate partners.
“Mentorships with corporate partners and event opportunities exposes @YourGate to some of the most innovative minds in the travel industry,” says Paul Mastracchio, Founder & CEO of @YourGate. “Working with Plug and Play gives us access to an entire team, along with corporate partners, for support in validating our product and getting to market faster.”
The startups will pitch their polished ideas to corporate partners and investors at Plug and Play’s Travel & Hospitality EXPO. To see these startups in person, attend Plug and Play’s EXPO on June 24th. Register here: http://bit.ly/26R1G16
About Plug and Play Tech Center
Plug and Play Tech Center is the world’s largest global technology accelerator and venture fund. Since inception in 2006, our program has expanded worldwide to include entrepreneurs from 24 countries, providing necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley. With over 350 startups and 300 corporate partners, we have created the ultimate startup ecosystem. Plug and Play provides active investments with 180 leading Silicon Valley VCs, and more than 365 networking events per year. Companies in our community have raised over $3.5 billion in funding, with successful portfolio exits including Danger, Dropbox, Lending Club, PayPal, SoundHound, and Zoosk. For more information, visit: http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com
Allison Romero, Plug and Play Tech Center, http://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com, +1 (408) 524-1457, [email protected]
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