Celebrating International Women’s Day 2021

On International Women’s Day 2021, Traveltech for Scotland celebrates the inspiring female-led businesses and start-ups in the Traveltech for Scotland community and shines a light on their achievements, innovation and business leadership.

This year’s International Women’s Day theme is Choose to Challenge: a challenge for change and a challenge for a more gender-equal world. To challenge is something we can all do as business leaders and community members, to help drive change for equality, not just for one day, but every day.

At Traveltech for Scotland our challenge is to make sure that Scotland is the best place in the world for women leaders, entrepreneurs, software developers and engineers to thrive in travel technology; and to champion their achievements. As a community of traveltech and tourism innovators, let’s all continue to work together to challenge ourselves and each other, and the art of the possible.

Discover more on the businesses listed and others in the Traveltech for Scotland Directory.

Appointedd — Leah Hutcheon

Founded in 2011 by Leah Hutcheon, Appointedd is an award-winning booking and scheduling tool, with a vision: to make anything, or anyone, bookable online in as little as two taps. Appointedd currently operates across 23 countries, powers scheduling for businesses of all sizes, and its cutting-edge technology is trusted by some of the world’s best brands to transform tours, tastings, and activities into bookable experiences. One such example is Ardnahoe Distillery on Islay. In just 3 months of getting set up with Appointedd, its online booking tools generated 721 bookings for Ardnahoe experiences. The distillery now estimates that 70% of its bookings are generated online using Appointedd’s booking technology.

Click Book Stay — Tara Scott

Founded in 2006, Click Book Stay is an independent business, offering property management systems, dynamic pricing software and operations and housekeeping software. The company has personally owned self-catering properties, so it doesn’t just offer “theoretical” strategies, but real advice that has worked to make its own properties highly successful. Having gone through it all themselves, they know exactly what works — and what doesn’t. The company is the first Holiday Let Agency to obtain the REST Accreditation for Responsible, Ethical and Sustainable Tourism. REST is a quality grading scheme for tourism and hospitality businesses, measuring the responsibility, ethics and sustainability of their practices. The scheme is designed to objectively quantify each business’ commitment to the environment, their visitors, their staff and their suppliers. For Click Book Stay “It’s about giving consideration to our environmental impact, shopping / support local communities and paying fair wages. We want to encourage people to travel responsibly.”

Criton — Julie Grieve

When creating the guestbook for the launch of a luxury serviced apartment in 2014, Founder & CEO Julie Grieve became frustrated with the cost and administration required to ensure it was continuously up to date. Quoted £9,000 to produce an app which had limited content control, Julie recognised a gap in the market and June 2016 Criton was born. Criton is an award-winning guest engagement platform which simplifies digital transformation, helping operators deliver the perfect digital guest journey and maximise in-stay spend. With Criton, hotels and serviced apartment operators can digitise their guest information and wrap all-guest facing technology into a sophisticated mobile app. Features of the award-winning mobile technology include mobile check-in, digital door key, in-room messaging and ordering, location-based push notifications and more.

Electrek Explorer — Elaine Ford

An artist and wildlife biologist, Elaine studied BA Fine Art and BSc Biology (Ecology) with integrated MSc Tropical Biodiversity at the University of Edinburgh. Elaine is currently in a start-up accelerator with Geovation Scotland developing Electrek Explorer, a mobile app for electric tourism in order to be a part of the solution towards a greener economy. Elaine has been shortlisted as this year’s Rising Star finalist of the 2021 AccelerateHER Awards sponsored by Aberdein Considine and Purpose HR, the category recognising a female company founder with a great early-stage business idea. A winner from each of the four award categories will be revealed at a virtual finals event on 25 March 2021.

Grand Bequest — Dr Katherine Gunderson

Dr. Katherine Gunderson is the founder of Grand Bequest. Grand Bequest is a unique historical real estate platform, a property technology company that empowers individuals to save old buildings at scale. It offers memberships that connect communities and organisations directly with the resources they need to reclaim, conserve, and reuse vacant old buildings. Katherine is eternally searching for ways to improve the built environment and desires to never stop learning ways to continually improve the possibilities for vacant and derelict buildings. She obtained her MSc in Architectural Conservation from the University of Edinburgh’s Scottish Centre For Conservation Studies as well as her Doctorate in Business Administration from the University of Liverpool. Katherine’s key academic priorities include a systematic analysis of the state of buildings at risk and real estate entrepreneurship.

SENSECity — Pooja Katara

Pooja Katara is an architect and graduate of Glasgow School of Art. She founded SENSEcity, which specialises in the development of software and augmented reality experiences that allow users to navigate cities or historic sites by accessing 3D experiences that bring the architecture, culture and environments to life. SENSEcity has won several grants and has successfully launched its first product in Glasgow, offering an innovative and unique way to explore Glasgow’s built heritage. SENSECity recently won the Creative Converge Challenge through which it is expanding into Edinburgh.

Smartify — Anna Lowe

Anna Lowe is Co-Founder and Director of Partnerships at Smartify, which has been described as the world’s most downloaded museum app. The multi award-winning app helps people make meaningful connections with art, using image recognition technology to instantly identify artworks by scanning them on your smartphone and returning curated information in text, audio, video and AR. A regular speaker and facilitator, Anna’s goal is to encourage young people to develop a creative voice and empower the next generation of creative tech entrepreneurs.

Super Control — Melinda Kennedy

Founded in 2007 by Melinda and Robert Kennedy, SuperControl was created to satisfy the demand of savvy owners and agencies seeking specialist property management software to book and manage their holiday rentals were frustrated to find no system dedicated to their needs; just adapted hotel systems. SuperControl is leading the self-catering market’s adoption of online booking technology by developing and delivering the best property management solution, enabling businesses around the world to excel and prosper. Melinda Kennedy writes in Super Control’s blog, “Powering peace of mind for our community has always been a priority for SuperControl. Run by self-caterers for self-caterers, we are one tribe, working together for the greater good of our industry.”

Private House Stays — Cassie Bouverie

Private House Stays founder and CEO, Cassie Bouverie founded Private House Stays in 2010 having run a Bed & Breakfast in Edinburgh for 12 years. Cassie says, “I wanted to provide a service for people who didn’t want to stay in, impersonal hotel chains. The aim is to make booking privately-owned accommodation simple and easy through the Private House Stays website, which offers a more authentic and personal local accommodation experience.” The company has recently launched a new website. Cassie is a Member of the Tourism Management Institute, the Scottish Tourism Alliance and is part of the lobby group promoting the Safe & Legal Accommodation Provider Group.

Quenchable & Wine Tube Map — Nikki Welch

Nikki Welch is founder of start-up Quenchable, an app-based training tool designed for front-of-house staff. Quenchable won the Scottish Edge Wild Card category in December 2018 and the Herald Digital Award for Education and Learning in 2019. Nikki’s considerable experience in the wine industry inspired her first start-up, the WineTubeMap. Quenchable began in May 2018 with its initial product an interactive wine training app that improves the confidence and competence of front-of-house staff ‘drop by drop’. By providing training digitally, Quenchable overcomes many fundamental barriers and enables businesses to offer training to all members of staff, increasing inclusion and skill-building for everyone.

Unbaggaged — Janani Prabhakaran

After graduating from Strathclyde University with a first-class Honours Degree in Business Administration, Janani Prabhakaran started her own travel related startup, Unbaggaged. Janani has been part of the University of Strathclyde-run Rising Stars programme and RBS accelerator programme. Unbaggaged provides a digital network for on-demand luggage solutions, with the service specifically tailored to Airbnb and serviced apartment guests. Travellers in Edinburgh can have their bags picked up and returned by a black cab at a time and place convenient to them within the city, as well as being able to book further taxi transport options as part of their trip.

Discover more on International Women’s Day #IWD2021 #ChoosetoChallenge