A dozen travel Titans of tomorrow have been unveiled for this year’s Business Travel Show Disrupt Launchpad as voting opens to shortlist the five 2019 Disrupt Awards finalists at https://www.businesstravelshow.com/whats-on/disrupt-awards
All 12 disruptors – a 50 per cent increase on last year – have been selected to exhibit in the Launchpad for their potentially game-changing business travel solutions, which range from a culture navigation tool, rail delay repayment handling, predictive flight delay and a company raising awareness of mental health and wellbeing for companies and individuals.
Following a public online vote at https://www.businesstravelshow.com/whats-on/disrupt-awards, the 12 will be whittled down to a shortlist of five who go on to pitch to the Disrupt Award judges at the Business Travel Show. The final will take place at the Business Travel Show at 1pm on Wednesday 20 February.
The Disrupt Dream Dozen are:
- Air2E – provides individual, time-saving, cost-efficient and environment-friendly mobility services for business travel
- CultureMee – the first content platform in the world to help travellers navigate other cultures
- Driven – a solution that predicts flight delays hours to weeks before departure empowering travellers to make better itinerary choices and respond effectively to potential disruptions
- Harbour84 – helps business travellers to discover their perfect co-working space when they are on the move
- Hello Jet – a marketplace for business and private aviation charter allowing companies to charter aircraft themselves without the need for special knowledge or access to the base price, for the very first time
- Raketa – a powerful, agnostic digital platform giving corporate clients direct access to service providers
- Railguard – a third-party delay repay, claims-handling company that monitors rail travel
- SalesTrip – an all-in-one travel booking, ticketing and expense management system on Salesforce, changing the way organisations manage, govern and justify corporate travel and expenses
- Simpila – provides solutions to help raise awareness and support for mental health and wellness to companies and individuals
- Stay22 - a venue-centric accommodation map tailored for travelling event-goers
- Taptrip - aims to make business travel completely frictionless for businesses and travellers with a self-serve, omni channel travel solution that lets travellers book travel around their calendars with ease
- Waylo – a unique price prediction technology and futures-based business model aiming to become the way every perishable inventory is priced in future
Taptrip co-founder and CCO Neil Ruth: “Launchpad provides a platform for innovative and disruptive businesses to support the progression and evolution of the business travel space. There are still a lot of problems to solve in business travel. No one is yet to crack disruption management, an area we are focused on, but there's so much more, and it makes for an exciting showcase of creativity and innovation for start-ups to launch from.”
The 2019 Business Travel Disrupt Awards judges are:
- Nick Easen, freelance travel journalist and head judge
- Molly Dyson, digital editor, Buying Business Travel
- Amanda Greenwood, community and content manager, Business Travel iQ
- Andy Hoskins, editor, The Business Travel Magazine
- Dennis Vilović, founder TroopTravel
Last year’s Disrupt Awards winner was TroopTravel. Founder Dennis Vilović said: “Being at the Business Travel Show created massive value for us. Independently of winning the Disrupt Award, we received a huge amount of input and feedback on our product. Looking at our first commercial clients, most of them are contacts we made at the Business Travel Show in 2018. In addition, we met Johnny Thorsen, a well-respected expert in the business travel industry, at the show for the first time and he is now one of our key strategic advisors. Without us being at the show, we would not be where we are today.”
Business Travel Show group event director David Chapple added: “The travel industry is one of the most innovative, evolving at a pace beyond many others. Without innovation, there would be no transport, no on board Wi-Fi, no biometric security gates, no online check-in, Airbnb and Uber. This industry embraces and supports innovation like no other and we’re really excited for our visitors to meet this year’s Disrupt dream dozen at the Business Travel Show.”
