Fed Up with The Current State of Travel, Travel Tech Con Challenges Norms
Here is what Maksim Izmaylov, founder of Travel Tech Con said about what lead him to create it:
“Our first conference in May 2016 aimed to fill the gap left by travel industry conferences and trade shows that don’t cater to startups or talk about real problems the travel industry is facing.
It’s been almost a year since then and we see that the travel industry problems lie much deeper. As one of the travel executives we talked to put it: the biggest problem in travel is ego. The symptoms of this problem are that there is no collaboration, there are no events or communities where travel industry professionals solve common problems. There are no open-source projects in travel and no events for software engineers. Sam Altman once said that one can approximately predict how well a field is doing by its willingness to accept contributions from outsiders and travel is extremely hard for startups.
The main goal of Travel Tech Con 2017 is to enable collaboration in travel on multiple different levels:
- Help startups to navigate in the travel industry and connect them to established travel companies
- Allow big travel companies to learn from startups about how to move faster
- Learn from technology experts
- Enable permission-less innovation by putting software developers together”
Frustration with the state of technology in Travel
“I am passionate about making travel a more enjoyable experience for everyone. As an avid traveller and a person who knows technology, I’m very frustrated with the state of tech in travel. Don’t even get me started and ask me what I mean exactly.
- Did you know that information about available rooms and prices at a hotel has to be entered to Booking.com manually?
- Did you know that the content on the screen in front of your seat on the plane is not personalized at all?
- Did you know that airport systems do not know how many passengers are on the plane that is about to land?
- Did you know that in 2015 at least 2 huge travel companies released their JSON APIs (technology that is 10+ years old) and claimed it a breakthrough?
We talk about robots, virtual reality and other cool toys, but the plumbing we inherited from 20th century is broken. Travel Tech Con is here to fix it.”
Maksim Izmaylov’s passion is to solve problems with technology and he successfully does so in the travel industry.
Maksim Izmaylov is founder and president of Roomstorm, company that helps airlines to find hotel rooms for passengers from delayed and cancelled flights. He also founded Travel Tech Con, a community and a series of events for travel startups and established travel companies. Maksim’s last project is Winding Tree, a completely new way of doing travel distribution using the blockchain. The project is completely open-source.
Register for Travel Tech Con Today!
Travel Tech Con is an independent travel industry conference dedicated to startups and technologies that will transform travel in the next few years. Join us in May 2017 in San Francisco for three days of learning, making connections and having a great time.
