NEWS TRAVEL FORWARD
NINJA STARS!
AMADEUS FOSTERS STARTUP TALENT AT TRAVEL FORWARD
Andrew Doherty, senior features reporter
This is the second year Amadeus (SP421) has sponsored Travel Forward’s Startup Showcase competition and startup exhibitor zone, a space designed to exhibit the latest innovations in travel and hospitality. More than 12 startups are exhibiting in this zone over the two days of Travel Forward, with several going head-to-head in a visionary pitch to a panel of judges on day one (Monday) to win one of three spots in the startup competition final today (Tuesday), which will be held at 16:30 in the TF Keynote Theatre. Evantia Giumba, head of the Amadeus Startup Programme, said: “We have been working with startups for the past five years. We recognise their importance
for travel, and their ability to design innovative solutions to meet the needs of today’s traveller.” Following a short presentation, the winning startup will be chosen by the audience via a live voting system, before collecting their prize – 12 hours of coaching from senior leaders across Amadeus’ verticals as well as a complimentary stand at next year’s Travel Forward. “We genuinely believe startups have
a lot to offer the industry and traveller experience in general. We’re convinced innovation can be found everywhere – so we’re very open-minded about helping people with great new ideas to become part of the wider travel ecosystem,” said Giumba. “Travel Forward is a fantastic opportunity for fledgling companies to showcase their product and market their brand.”
KOEDIA HOMES IN ON GLOBAL EXPANSION TO KEY MARKETS
French travel tech firm Koedia (TT640) has its eyes on expansion in Thailand, Korea, Brazil, China and North America. Established in 2006, the company specialises in providing distribution solutions for bed banks, TMCs, high street travel agencies, DMCs and hotel chains. Koedia CEO and president Olivier
Ferrero said: “As we are now one of the leaders in the travel tech sector in France, it came naturally that we decided to expand abroad. Today we have enough content to sustain
international demand in the principal market and already have clients in Thailand, Korea, the UK, Brazil, China and North America. “We go mainly by opportunities, as we
receive a lot of demands from operators all over the world. We like to exchange and talk with our distributors to see what priorities we can have in common – we like a win-win collaboration: their priorities are our priorities.” Over the past few days, Koedia has been showcasing its “Hotel Direct Access” offer, which launched this
September. Hotel Direct Access enables travel distributors to have Koedia as the only point of contact for connectivity, with a dedicated team on hand to reduce connection times. “We noticed our customers were
struggling to get the right connectivity for hotel content,” added Ferrero. “As we manage the content flow on
the technological side, from search to booking, we naturally set up a new service for this particular matter. Our objective is to smooth all the steps between distributors and providers.”
05.11.2019 WTM OFFICIAL EVENT DAILY 39
Since itinerary management specialists Trip Ninja (TT903) scooped the Travel Forward Startup of 2018 title at last year’s WTM London, the company has been on a roll, says CEO Andres Collart (pictured). “In the past year we’ve tripled
the size of our team and brought in new partners. We’ve also launched a new product, SmartMarkup, which offers dynamic mark-ups for OTAs,” he said. Find out 2019’s winner at 16:00
today in the TF Keynote Theatre or visit
travelforward.wtm.com
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