So, we got back from an awesome few days at Travel Tech Con 18 and now that the after party is fading, Mark Fancourt and I sat down to discuss travel technology and our takeaways from the event.
1. Plenty of buzz for Unboundly
In beta, the crew from Unboundly pitched on day 1. Plenty of attendees were talking about it over the 3 days. By the end, they picked up a bunch of the judges prizes too.
From destination discovery to finding the best prices for your budget. Their goals are to use tech to open up international travel to everyone by challenging the travel industries “one size fits all” approach.
Really looking forward to seeing this launch.
2. Accessibility Travel Tech with Loud Steps
Paul, from Boni Global, was part of the start-up pitch day. Being from Vegas, indoor navigation for the visually impaired was a real stand out to us.
Imagine this use case, MGM Grand has 6,852 rooms, what would it mean for guests with visual impairments to have this greater level of assistance when navigating to/from their room, the monorail to the convention center, or venues on property.
http://www.loudsteps.com/download/howitworks.pdf
3. SkyHi membership model for flat-rate flights
We spent an hour distracting Rama Poola on day 2 at The VAULT chatting about his start-up.
SkyHi has members pay a monthly subscription, that gives them access to buy up to 5 one-way flights per month at a flat rate, based on the distance of the flight. $35, $75, $120
Certainly interesting for those of us who are notorious for last minute bookings, or remote workers that I know who regularly commute to a Vegas “HQ”
4. Top Traveler Behavior Trends to Watch
Konrad Waliszewski from TripScout gave a great keynote on top traveler behavior trends.
Looking for the slides/video from the https://medium.com/traveltechconpage. Will update as soon as we see them.
5. Travel distribution on blockchain — lots of interest
The first hands-on workshop for engineering/product teams was well attended. Augusto Lemble ran a great session. Regardless of how good the idea is, or how well built the technology is, educating teams/enterprises is a big part of making adoption successful.