“Hackathons drive collaboration, innovation and creativity among our engineers and build a healthy competition”
Joakim Everstin, Sabre’s head of innovation and technology, says: “Hackathons drive collaboration, innovation and creativity among our engineers and build a healthy competition”. Its Bangalore development centre also organises the ‘Big Pitch’ as a part of the travel giant’s Global Innovation Garage event. Employees are encouraged to come up with ideas that can revolutionise travel and “add significantly to Sabre’s revenues”. Big firms must communicate with staff at all levels – not only to share news, but also to encourage collaboration. Sabre, for example, has just launched Ignite – an internal online ideas platform. “It is a new way of working that taps into the collective creativity and innovative spirit of our colleagues,” says Everstin. “Our customers demand continuous innovation to help them solve problems and stay ahead, so we launched Ignite to meet these demands and create an environment where fresh ideas and innovation can thrive.” At Icon, Chillingworth believes communication is key – he films events such as hackathons, to “gather
those thoughts” and distribute them. “I’ve met hundreds of chief information officers and what’s clear is the need to communicate, to open up new channels.” Hackathons are taken to a new level for one digital agency. Cain Ullah, chief executive of Red Badger, runs them internally during a request for proposal (RFP). Red Badger has worked previously with the BBC and current clients include Tesco, Fortnum & Mason and the Financial Times. Upon receiving a tender document his team will typically run a hackathon to create a minimum viable product. It often impresses the client, who may have been expecting a standard PowerPoint presentation. “The secret is to treat the RFP as any other delivery project, but distilled into a shorter period of time. I don’t know anyone else who does it [but] it’s the future, as the proof’s in the pudding,” he adds, urging travel companies to think along the same lines. Inspiration comes in many shapes and sizes – the secret, it seems, is to have the right structures in place to meet it half way. Then, as the cliché goes, the sky’s the limit.
Icelandair is offering passengers the option of booking flights through
IN BRIEF
Facebook Messenger. Facebook’s ‘Stopover Bot’ is part of the rising trend of ‘conversational commerce’. It also has a flight search function and FAQs feature.
Uber and Lyft bookings accounted for 49 per cent of the overall ground transportation category in the US, in Q2 2016. A study by Certify analysed more than 10 million business traveller receipts. Car rental and taxi receipts for the quarter represent 37 per cent and 14 per cent of the category total, with taxis down 51 per cent since 2014.
First hackathon success
CONSULTANCY FESTIVE ROAD IS A FACILITATOR of IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) programme. It recently helped organise the IATA NDC Business Travel Hackathon – the first initiative of its type to focus solely on business travel. Aurelie Krau, associate at Festive Road, acted as a business travel mentor and supported the participants. “Hackathons are already mainstream in other sectors, and business travel is starting to catch up,” she says. “These initiatives will attract more of the next generation to our sector and it shows that business travel can be fun.” Overall, there were 21 teams made up from 104 developers, five sponsors and five
API providers. They presented prototypes of desktop or mobile apps answering one or both of the challenges the organisers had created for them (either around improving the business traveller journey or around improving travel data). “By bringing in people from outside of our industry, it triggers more creativity,” Krau says. “The very nature of a hackathon is that you get some tangible examples of that innovation and this helps people to visualise what NDC can help to bring.” Find out more at:
ndc.developer.iata.org/hackathon-berlin.html
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM BBT September/October 2016 23
Mobile travel software firm MTT has partnered with Collinson Group to create an app for its ‘LoungeKey’ membership scheme, which enables
passengers to access premium travel benefits worldwide. MTT was acquired by Travelport in July last year.
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