This year Travolution is proud to present the brand new Start-up and Innovation Summit. The one-day event is a first of its kind which will see us pair a morning dedicated to start-ups, including a live pitching competition, with an afternoon of content delving into the latest innovation shaping our industry.
Held at The Trampery Old Street, aptly located in the heart of London's technology cluster, on Thursday, October 26 from 8:30am, we will bring together who’s who across the ecosystem, from entrepreneurs and investors, to mentors and organisations that give back and support next-gen companies.
It will also see the launch of the annual Travolution Innovation Report that analyses tech investment in the UK travel sector and showcases the most innovative players in the industry.
Join us for an enriching day that will foster new ideas and technologies, with leading industry experts.
Registrations for the 2023 Start-up and Innovation Summit are now closed. If you would like to register your interest for next year's event, please click here to fill in the form.
The 2023 Innovation Report will offer detailed insight of who’s spending how much on what in the UK travel industry. Our excusive analysis of Office for National Statistics data will show how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted what travel agents, tour operators, hotel companies, cruise and ferry operators and aviation firms are spending in five areas of IT. The report will also highlight top travel tech initiatives in Spain as the country continues to set themselves up as an incubator for industry start-ups.
Speakers:
Clare de Bono, country manager, Amadeus UK and associate director strategy & transformation, Amadeus
Lucy England, partner, Fox Williams
Mo Shakarchi, chief product and innovation officer, Collinson
Nick Shay, head of travel & hospitality, Publicis Sapient
In recent years, Spain has carved an identity as a travel technology leader. At policy level, Spain is investing heavily in digital transformation as a central part of its sustainable tourism strategy. Attached to its Ministry is SEGITTUR, a division dedicated entirely to innovation and tourism technology. Likewise, ITH, Spain’s Hotel Institute for Technology, is a non-profit private hospitality and tourism innovation centre whose mission is to improve the sector's competitiveness through innovation and technology with more than 100 pilot projects in place. On the ground, many international travel companies are operating their HQs from Spain. The likes of TUI Musement, Hotelbeds and Travel Compositor, all operate from their headquarters in Palma with Mallorca now coined the Silicon Valley for travel tech”. We hear how Turespaña are setting the country up to be an incubator for new companies in the industry.
Speaker:
Maria Hernandez, head of department, Turespana (UK)
Moderator:
Kate Harden-England, editor, Travolution
This session will see the founders of five travel start-ups each give short ten-minute elevator pitches about their companies in front of a panel of industry experts who have three minutes to grill them on their plans.
Judges:
Ian Brooks, partner, co-founder and investor in tech-enabled travel start-ups, Gail Kenny Executive Recruitment
Evantia Giumba, business development director, Amadeus Launchpad and commercial director Benelux & France online, travel sellers, Amadeus
Morgann Lesné, partner, Cambon Partners
Mo Shakarchi, chief product and innovation officer, Collinson
Bryan Shaw, partner, Fox Williams
Nick Shay, head of travel & hospitality, Publicis Sapient
This session will see the founders of five travel start-ups each give short ten-minute elevator pitches about their companies in front of a panel of industry experts who have three minutes to grill them on their plans.
Judges:
Ian Brooks, partner, co-founder and investor in tech-enabled travel start-ups, Gail Kenny Executive Recruitment
Evantia Giumba, business development director, Amadeus Launchpad and commercial director Benelux & France online, travel sellers, Amadeus
Morgann Lesné, partner, Cambon Partners
Mo Shakarchi, chief product and innovation officer, Collinson
Bryan Shaw, partner, Fox Williams
Nick Shay, head of travel & hospitality, Publicis Sapient
A new segment for the Start-up and Innovation Summit. Each year, we’ll welcome back a previous winner of the Travolution Start-up of the Year award, to share important learnings from their journey to success and what their origin story looked like.
Speaker:
Alex Gisbert, founder, Fastpayhotels & MD of XEA Consulting
As we adjust to life under generative AI’s hold, we bring together top industry thought leaders to evaluate the innovations taking place that aren’t LLMs and ChatGPT specific. We’ll look to explore advancements like personalisation, airport biometrics and security, to management of revenue and property.
Speakers:
Steve Endacott, chairman, Neural River
Adam Gelencser, lead data scientist, easyJet
Tim Waring, head of development, addmustard
Startups used to be about building MVPs, testing with consumers and then scaling. But the rules in 2023 are different to what they were 15 years ago, the largest companies in the sector have declared they will clone early AI startups rather than acquire, public MVPs help them as much as they help the startup. In this presentation Alex will outline how defense is the new attack, setting new guidelines for how entrepreneurs should think about their early traction phase.
Speaker:
Alex Bainbridge, CEO, Autoura
Pain points of FinTech in travel still remain, with some viewing interoperability as one of the biggest challenges. So, how can product optimisation and other solutions alike play a part in overcoming this? How do you approach adopting other forces driving evolvement of payments - including real-time payment rails, open banking, embedded finance and digital wallets or super apps - as we look ahead to understand why players that don’t offer “value beyond payments” might not be able to compete.
Speakers:
Angus Hardy, co-founder & CFO, Holibob
Richard Ney, CEO, Lerex
Now we know not everyone automatically thinks of M&As when they think of innovation but actually mergers and acquisitions should be synonymous with it. Often, they can open opportunities to invigorate new ideas, new approaches and new tech. Join us for a guided session on how to tackle spotting suitable opportunities and what they can mean for business.
Speaker:
Morgann Lesné, partner, Cambon Partners
Moderator:
Kate Harden-England, editor, Travolution
Everyone thinks of Skyscanner as platform to drive performance to the airline and destination clients, but we are much more than that, we can offer great experience in the upper funnel for the whole range of industries, that are related to travel. We have a really exciting example of our project for luxury beauty brand Estee Lauder promoting their duty free service in the airport Reserve & Collect. As data driven business we used our data to help client to understand the best way to build their campaign as well used some unique targeting options, which overall was very successful experience.
Speaker:
Alina Sutulova, senior commercial manager, Skyscanner
Our speakers are experts drawn from leading travel and disruptive digital brands
The Start-up and Innovation Summit's commercial partners are at the cutting edge of marketing distribution and innovative thinking
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