Michael Coletta, Research and Innovation Manager at Phocuswright, joins Travel Tech Con 2018
We are happy to welcome Michael to Travel Tech Con 2018! Michael will present the latest report on the State of Travel Startups & will lead a workshop on successful business models in travel.
Michael Coletta has served in a variety of high-level roles in travel industry, at startups, and at digital agencies, driving results spanning technology, business development, monetization, marketing, product and design.
We had a chance to ask Mike a few questions about his perspective on the industry and opportunities for startups.
What in your opinion drives innovation and leaps forward in travel industry today and how is it different from say 10 years ago?
I’ll start with what hasn’t changed: Innovation and leaps forward are always driven by new ideas from creative entrepreneurs. Trends, technologies and behaviors will change, but there will always be room for new ideas. In the last decade, a huge ecosystem of travel-focused incubators, accelerators, investors, pitch competitions, and conferences (like yours!) has blossomed to support those ideas. Travel is a complex industry, and there is more funding and mentorship available than ever. It’s something that just didn’t exist 10 years ago.
What do startups building next generation travel tech products need to understand about the industry evolution and future opportunities?
I think right now, especially on the B2C side, innovation is a bit stifled by the fact that the biggest companies in and out of travel (Priceline, Expedia, Google, Amazon etc), have deepened their competitive moats through acquisitions, broadened business scopes, and massive investments in technology and marketing, making it harder to build breakout startups like Airbnb or Uber. But there is always room for new ideas, and we’ seeing big opportunities come up in certain markets and geographies. Big funding is an indicator of where investors see big opportunity. A good example is in bike-sharing in Asia Pacific. Go-Jek and ofo have each raised more than $2B within the last three-years. On the B2B side, I’m seeing more opportunity and lots of promising startups leveraging new tech like AI to solve problems for industry players in areas such as revenue management, corporate booking, direct booking, tour aggregation and distribution, merchandising, payments, loyalty, and serving the private accommodations ecosystem.
What are some of your favorite travel tech products, projects or innovation initiatives that the industry should be paying attention to?
Well, I’m pretty biased to Phocuswright’s innovation initiatives! We have our Battleground: The Americas pitch competition coming up in August at Google Headquarters in New York (where the lucky winner of the TTC pitch competition will get to present), our Summit pitch competition at our global conference in November (which is the premier stage to present new innovations to the travel industry), and we’re planning on adding a new component to the conference to leverage the Phocuswright network to create a curated matchmaking environment between startups, investors and corporates. A few favorite startups include: Winding Tree, because I believe blockchain technology has big disruptive potential and Max has great passion and vision; Redeam, which is working on eliminating paper vouchers for tour and attraction suppliers (and won our Battleground last year as well as three prizes at Summit); and Maidbot, which is building robotic vacuum cleaners for hotels because their robots help lower operating expenses, boost efficiency, prevent injuries, and do other smart things like detecting WiFi dead zones.
Join us in welcoming Michael & Phocuswright to TTC18!
