Gianni Cataldo, Director of Research Development at ATPCO, joins Travel Tech Con 2018

We are happy to welcome Gianni joining Travel Tech Con 2018 judges team! With over twenty years of leadership experience in global travel technology companies, Gianni is an innovative technology leader with extensive experience in curating and launching travel product solutions. Most recently Gianni established an innovation labs strategy, partnering with early-stage startups and global airline brands to identify and leverage disruptive technologies, to drive new revenue streams.

We asked Gianni a few questions on his vision for travel tech developments.

Gianni, what in your opinion drives innovation and leaps forward in travel industry today and how is it different from say 10 years ago?

Part 1 — technically and financially barriers to entry have been removed, previously a new venture would need the backing of a major entity or relatively high levels of seed investment to enter the travel market. Now with cloud services and the capability to consume public travel data the constraints have been lifted.

Part 2 — advent of mobile computing, on demand capacity, location centric services, marketplace sharing are rapidly changes the equation as to what is possible. This drives a wedge into what we have come to accept as the status quo of travel experiences versus the new reality of what is possible. This gives innovators the encouragement to go fix the newly broken travel experiences.

What do startups building next generation travel tech products need to understand about industry evolution and future opportunities?

Travel startups need to understand the changes that all the travel suppliers are in the process of implementing, their focus is to build their own core technical capabilities and become less reliant on community systems, this presents a challenge in terms of a single source for all data, but represents an opportunity to unify differentiated service providers into a seamless experience.

Also, understanding the core economics of the travel industry and relate that to how you intend to generate value, airlines work on slim margins and are capital constrained, in that if they had 1M in capital spend they would rather use that to purchase a new aircraft than invest. The easier targets do come in efficiency plays, reducing friction (costs) related to inefficient

What are some of your favorite travel tech products, projects or innovation initiatives that the industry should be paying attention to?

I like what Volantio is doing, they are moving beyond solving the relatively obvious broken travel experience of overbooking, and looking to turn that into a new product type for an always available fare. I also like what Ineye are doing, by looking at the internet of things, developing a hand held solid state device to represent not what a bag weighs, but what it costs in context of travel plans, that’s a great fix to another broken experience. Also they have the potential to revolutionize the airport experience by reducing the footprint of baggage check-in stations. Then there are a couple of straight up odd ball plays that really excite me such as Skyguru. Who have mapped out turbulence patterns on airline routes and product a ride quality metric, that helps differentiate a flight based on equipment, carrier and time of year.

Join us for Travel Tech Con 2018 pitch competition on June 7th and meet Gianni and many other travel tech experts on our judges panel!