Conferma, a vanguard in leading technology aiming at integrating multiple travel suppliers has announced its partnership with Wirecard to introduce “Virtual Suppliers Payment Card’ by Wirecard for business travel transactions through Conferma’s network. Wirecard’s virtual card would be made available in Asia Pacific for the first time. The partnership would bring about an extension to reach additional consumer base for Wirecard. This is in accordance with company’s direct initiatives to bring about Virtual Card services to the travel network in a mid-currency fashion supporting travel management companies with reconciliation and data to support their own client travel programs.

Conferma is a FinTech company specializing in Virtual Card technology. Headquartered in Manchester, Conferma manages travnsactions in 96 currencies in 193 countries and is an industry standard in corporate travel payment. Conferma’s Virtual Card technology is mainly about simplifying over-complicated processes in Travel and Expense payments. Conferma’s many established travel partners include all three Global Distribution Systems (GDS), Sabre, Amadeus and Travelport; leading corporate Travel Management Companies (TMCs) such as CWT, HRG, AMEX GBTA; online booking tools and other booking technology providers.

Wirecard’s Executive Vice President of Global Financial Services, Grigoriy Kuznetsov, said: “We were looking for a way to integrate with global distribution systems and travel management platforms that are already on the market without approaching each vendor individually. Conferma offers a unique solution for this need and enables us to address a wide range of clients around the world through a single API integration. We are looking forward to leverage our partnership in combination with our global issuing operations to enable virtual card payments for our joint clients across multiple geographies.”

Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments.

Conferma was able to tap into APIs to seamlessly integrate its Virtual Card delivery platform with Wirecard’s Card Management System in a very brief time. Darren Blair, Director of Sales, Asia Pacific at Conferma said: “Wirecard is an innovative and forward thinking leader in payments. Together, we have worked to deploy a multi-country and multi-currency tool, and we look forward to powering Wirecard’s virtual card payments and data reconciliation, expanding the solution globally.”

Although the payment solution would specifically target Asia Pacific, Wirecard is looking at a global expansion.  The duo currently plans to seep into Singapore, followed by Hong Kong and then Australia.

Wirecard has been taking a stride with travel and tourism industry as they had launched Mobile Payment Solution in Lufthansa WorldShop Stores where Chinese tourists can pay with mobile Alipay Barcode Payment Payment. Its pilot phase began this month. Hence, this would not come as a surprise.

TravHQ take: The aforementioned solution would enable virtual cards to be issued in expandable currencies as they take their first plunge in Asia Pacific.

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Virtuoso, an international network of luxury travel agencies, is inviting travel tech start-up companies to enrol for their 2017 Incubator program. The mentor focuses on tools to develop enhanced advisory productivity and client service as it enters its third year.

Virtuoso had launched industry’s first formal program to foster these skill sets as it recognised the kind of gap that existed in the market. Its goal is to improve the efficacy level of the travel agency members and nurture promising tools by preserving their spirited edge.

The record-breaking program this year showcased 276 travel advisors in six countries testing solutions and providing feedback on how they currently use the technology and what they would expect from the future versions.  The program enables travel technology developers to gather real-world insights into the industry and help them polish their products to increase functionality plus fulfil market demand.  The testing process includes above mentioned deeds and once they are complete, the participants are considered for a full Virtuoso partnership.

“Virtuoso Incubator is at the forefront of improving the experience clients have with their travel advisor,” said David Kolner, senior vice president, Global Member Partnerships at Virtuoso. ”Through the program, Virtuoso travel advisors are innovating by adopting cutting-edge technology, demonstrating their flexibility and staying ahead of the curve. With the solutions curated and cultivated by Incubator, our advisors are bridging the gap between a traditional consultant and a technology-enabled advisor.”

From the 2016 Incubator participants, the two who graduated successfully from the program are:

• Tandem Cruise booking Engine: A B2B tool that finds, compares, quotes and cruises from a single web-based system.
• Engage: An integrated chat and video communication tool that helps advisors sell immediately online on any device, and makes clients accessible to advisors anytime with a single click.

“Virtuoso not only shares our vision to empower consumers and travel advisors with real-time communication capabilities, but has also been willing to put in the time and work necessary to validate and expand this program,” said Engage CEO Lief Larson. “I can’t fully articulate how valuable this partnership is to us and how highly we think of everyone in the Virtuoso organisation.”

The six companies that remain active in the Incubator program are Addo, Alanna, ITeXplorer, Travefy, Tripchamp, and Yonderbound. Virtuoso Incubator went into a partnership with Phocuswright Innovation Platform to locate start-ups with potential and leverage research in travel technology. It would enhance Virtuoso’s reach in the world of start-ups furthering the aim to incorporate emerging travel technology companies under its banner.

TravHQ take: The Virtuoso Members lead the industry in both the quality of their businesses, and their vision and strategy for the future. They can provide a vital link to finesse business models which is definitely a plus for the participating travel technology start-ups.

The application process has started for the year of 2017 and the interested parties can show their expression of interest here. The deadline for applications is November 30, 2016 and decisions would be made by January 2017.

Source: Travel Daily News

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Travelport Business Insights is a new analytics tool that launched in Asia Pacific region that provides travel agencies and other businesses with a ‘near real-time’ access to data from various sources. According to Travelport, this would bring benefits ranging from the ability to optimise supplier contracts, enhanced customer service and, improved operational efficiency.

“Our customers have told us the volume of data available to them is dramatically increasing, as is the time and cost of collating and interpreting the information,” said Mark Meehan, Travelport’s managing director for Asia Pacific.

The sources of integration are both traditional and non-traditional in nature which are then put together with predictive and forward-thinking analytics. The data is then accessible in a dashboard format which highlights key indicators and insights.

He continues to say, “We have developed Travelport Business Insights to help our customers make key business decisions that can improve revenue, enhance customer service and reduce operational costs by not only aggregating travel data from multiple sources but transforming the information into insights, providing businesses with a competitive edge.”

The whole packaging comes in three sizes designed to suit different sizes of business.

Source: TTG Asia

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Travel market is growing year over year with an expansive viewpoint that doesn’t leave any platform under the rock. The entire tourism industry knows the power of social media and how this could leverage travel marketing and conversions in their favour. Consumers have increasingly turned to mobile to get itinerary ideas, compare flight fares, or reserve experiences.

To dig more into this, Google Internal Data partnered with Sojern International, a global performance marketing engine for travel brands and built a complete path-to-purchase trend. ‘Micro-moments’, as they’d like to call it, is a term defined by Google analysts where a well-positioned brand can define a consumer’s behaviour through his decision patterns and choices he makes online. They analysed booking data from 350 anonymous traveller profiles and came to an exceptional outlook at traveller’s journey across video, online and mobile platforms.

Where are the people heading: Emerging spots this year

You Tube has come out to be on top of the list for people to get their travel inspirations and ideas. These media platforms are great at gauging people’s interest and purchase intent. The handful of destinations that rose in the first half of this year as the rising searches are:

1. Reykjavik
2. Havana
3. Toronto
4. Mexico City
5. Tokyo

Travel hacks and You Tube goes hand-in-hand

Travellers just don’t want to get their inspirations right but also their trip right. The experience that they’ve craved for should be made sure that it’s worth. And they get this right by hopping from one video to another that probably talks about tips to stay hydrated on a flight or perhaps how to minimise jet lag.

According to the data studied, travel hacks got searched on You Tube with an 115% increase over last year with a maximum influx from mobile devices. In a similar fashion, search interest went up by 16 times, hitting an all time hit in July in four years.

Mobile for research and desktop for booking

The mobile platform has been extensively used for researching whereas the desktop predominates the purchase market. Weekend searches with respect to travel on mobile outpace the desktop. And interestingly, destinations peak up on Tuesdays. Mobile searches help the brand stay top-of-mind when traveller starts thinking purchase.

Travellers use mobile to be spontaneous

Smartphones are the on-ground research tools for leisure travellers. Mobile allows travellers to be spontaneous once they reach the destination. 85% o f leisure travellers decide on their activities after reaching their destination. 50% of international travellers use a smartphone to look for things at their arrival.

India has a huge potential of becoming a ground breaking tourism market. It has a growing number of smart phone users and the millennial population is travelling with more experiential streak within them. This report comes as breath-of-fresh-air for the prospects the travel and tourism market has in store for the marketers.

Travel marketers need to evolve with the ongoing trends and as it is clearly visible, You Tube is the new search engine for the millennial. To know more about this report published last month, log on to thinkwithgoogle.com.

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Ever since 2013, Uber has steadily put itself on the face of the ride-hailing market in India and is speeding the way forward. It has undergone quantitative speculations over dozens of laws and has thrived to keep the market shares consistent. As a part of its latest brand campaign, ‘Move Forward’ Uber India has come up with a series of print and outdoor campaign. The four films that encapsulate the core idea of adoption and moving forward has been conceptualised by BBH India. The idea is to encourage the population to empower themselves in everyday situations.

Turning the focus on the adverts that have been made around the lives of Uber commuters, these four films depict real-life instances where the people hail from different walks of life and different region but move forward in the same direction.

One of the stories depicts an old couple using the Uber app to pre-book a taxi so that they can surprise their grandchild on his birthday at the stroke of midnight. This narrative brings about the sensitive topic of elderly people being less independent and imobile which is where Uber comes in play to jaunt them out of their 80s into their 18s.

The other one follows the life of a newlywed pair struggling to repair their fan in the midst of intense summer afternoon. As a result, they book an Uber and enjoy some alone-time in the comfort of an air-conditioned vehicle. The subtlety of the picturization falls on the merits it offers as a brand within a reasonable range.

Next, comes in scene a dictatorial mother exploring suitable prospective consort for her daughter as they commute in Uber Pool. It’s a satirical take on the dating apps like Tinder that have sprung in the last decade.

Speaking of which, we come to our last print that opens with a young girl in the back seat revising her lessons while being driven to school. The driver manages to get her little one through traffic to make her reach on time for her test. While she talks away in English with her father, the film reveals that the man is able to afford English medium schooling for her daughter, thanks to Uber.

The brand is obviously detouring from the tongue and cheek humour that has gotten things running in recent times. Unlike others, it has taken a very harmonious road where it builds focus on both drivers and consumers collectively. In a conversation with Financial Express, Ashwin Dias, General Manager, Uber India says, “The campaign focuses on both riders and driver partners. It emphasises that Uber driver partners are like you and me who have a family and are working.”

Uber gives a reason for both drivers and consumers to come on board through these soft-spoken adverts. In one of such efforts to magnetise the market share in the country, it has also launched a pan-India challenge UberPITCH in partnership with the ministry of commerce and industry where the innovators would get the opportunity to meet investors and make a pitch. Of course, their focus would be more on the Indian ground as they’ve shied away from China’s Didi Chuxing; The Uber Slayer as they’d be referred to as. They’ve been reportedly handling more volumes than Ola now which clearly boils down to one thing; they’re ready to push and #MoveForward.

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European car rental comparison startup Happycar has raised a further Euro 2.6 million in funding. The leading investors for the company’s third round of funding are Creathor Venture, HR Ventures, Capnamic Ventures, NWZ Digital, and TruVenturo.

However, there has been a potential conflict of interest between a previous investor, Rocket Internet’s GFC, as he did not part take in the current round. It had disposed of its shares in Happycar late last year to Creathor Venture after Rocket invested in some related industry start-up.

Currently operative in Germany, Netherlands, France, Spain, Ital and Poland but targeting car rentals worldwide- Happycar has a typical metasearch engine play structure. It has partnered with almost 1,000 car rentals both international and local to let the consumer find best prices. Filters like car type and insurance packages could be added more than just the price.

Happycar’s current CEO Robert Schütze, who was previously at Rocket Internet’s Zalando working as Country Manager for the UK and Poland stated “We are happy our investors have confidence in us as a team and are satisfied with the development of our company. We also greatly appreciate the opportunity to further expand our business into new markets. Additionally, we continuously work on improving our product to maximise customer satisfaction, and to bring more transparency into our processes”

Instead of scrolling through various car rental websites, Happycar enables customers to compare various offers from car rental providers on one single platform with a comprehensive and a transparent overview.

Source: Techcrunch

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Blue Origin, the commercial space travel start-up by Jeff Bezos the billionaire chief executive of Amazon, successfully separated a crew capsule from a rocket after it lifted off on Wednesday. The company had pushed its testing as an important step towards realising Blue’s dream of carrying tourists into space.

Space tourism has been circling the minds of all the tech giants with a singular motive to enable tourism in space. Where has that led anyone so far?  Well for starters, Blue Origin did convene this first in-flight test. This was to test the emergency escape system designed to save lives, the first of its kind in the U.S since 1960. Before putting anyone on board the spacecraft, the company wanted to make sure that the launcher system of its rocket would carry passengers to safety if anything goes wrong during the flight.

The rocket and the capsule system are intended for a suborbital flight where Bezos hopes to launch the first test flight with humans as early as next year, followed by tourists. The capsule could hold up to six people.

Yesterday’s launch would set in course the program which would require New Shepard spacecraft to take tourists on a suborbital jaunt across the boundary 62 miles above the earth which is regarded as the edge of outer space. The tourists would see the curvature of the planet and the blackness of space while experimenting to float at the top of the arc.

Last week, Rob Meyerson, Blue Origin’s President stated at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, that the Founder is aiming at a deeper level of space explorations and also taking aim at Mars. He further goes on to say that these missions are in accordance with Bezos’ long-term vision of millions of people living and working in space.

Blue Origin has gone a step further by developing reusable rockets so to incur less cost of reaching outer space. However, SpaceX , another private space company founded by Tesla’s Elon Musk is still facing a challenge to reuse any recovered rockets from these suborbital tests carried out by them earlier. Since Boeing CEO had challenged Musk’s ambitions to beat him to Mars, we’d see what is in store for the future of space tourism. He envisions commercial space-travel market with dozens of destinations orbiting the Earth and hypersonic aircraft shuttling travellers between continents in two hours or less.

Space travel is surely going to become a reality next year. The question is who’s going to get there first.

Source: The New York Times

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For how many of us have the outdoorsy ego inside? Doing a headcount wouldn’t be a convincing option. The only thing that caves us in is not finding the right set of enthusiasts who share the love for the same adventure sport as ours. Finding that right group is like butter to our bread which we often don’t get. Adventure listing sites and apps get us closer to finding our adventure streak but how many of them would help us find a group with similar interest/skill set like ours? This is where WayWiser gets us pumping.

This is a New Zealand-based online club for adventure sports which is also a curator of local outdoor adventure making it easier for enthusiasts find trips and creating them as well. It is an online, peer-to-peer platform designed to connect outdoor enthusiasts to others who share their passion and skill level. All of this is done by making a profile where one would fill out the skill sets one possesses and the trips taken and voila. It’s pretty much set and one can search more by filtering location, date and type of outdoor sport.

The Co-Founder and CEO, Brittany Jordt, talks about adventure sports with passion in her voice. Being outdoors is what she lives for. Prior to moving to New Zealand, her partner Colin and she imagined the landscape to be very promising for mountain biking, trail running and hiking. She wanted to be spoiled for choice and she couldn’t wait to get started. Only to find it later, the whole adventure thing would be a DIY gig, that both of them had a hard time connecting with people to get the best stuff. This information crunch propelled the idea for WayWiser: a portal that allows people to search for local adventure by sport, location, and date and then book a trip to share it with a local person.

The online property is pretty much treated like ‘tinder for outdoor bugs’ where they would get in touch with the like-minded people as the team is building a unique skill matching technology. This would match users based on sport, skill, and location which would make it easier to find other people who love to do what you do, at your level.  This is their edge above other commercial tour providers.

Operative only in New Zealand for now, WayWiser stacks categories like trail running, mountain biking,  rock climbing, and hiking but would eventually expand to all types of human-powered outdoor sport. Their usual traction gets generated from 25 to 55 year olds.

Brittany at a team outing

WayWiser emerged from Lightning Lab Digital Accelerator in Auckland. They came online on Jul 11 and currently have 1400 users on the website. The WayWiser community is in growth stage primarily who have dozens of ambassadors to lead curated adventures in New Zealand. The startup is about to close their pre-seed capital and will turn to raising funds coming March.

Adventure tourism serves right when done with likeminded people because that helps us to bond well over something that we are so passionate about. WayWiser is a step towards realising that goal.

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Tripadvisor has invested in Bangkok-based restaurant booking service Eatigo, as the start-up announced today. While the amount was undisclosed, Eatigo said that this Series B coupled with Series A that they generated last December would bring their coffers to US$15.5 million.

Eatigo specialises in off-peak bookings helping restaurants fill tables which are usually empty. It operates in Singapore and the Thai cities of Bangkok and Pattaya. The team goes by the saying “connects empty stomachs with empty tables” with no coupon or pre-payment of any sorts is necessary.

These funds galore would be majorly used for expansion to more South-east Asian nations but the CEO Michael Cluzel is keeping mum on which country to go next.

“We have feet on the ground in some [new] markets, off the radar. So there’s definitely work going on already,” he says.

Eatigo’s business model is based on time-based discounts- which means periods with the empty tables will lead to greater discounts. The merchants, around 700, offer discounts all day long, every day and all of the merchants offer 50% discounts on all food items time during the day. The start-up claims that it experiences a Month-on-Month growth of over 20 percent in reservations and revenue. Eatigo is currently working on some new features including loyalty programmes and a new layer of an algorithm that would enhance the user experience.

The speculations keep circling that Eatigo might work in accordance with Tripadvisor’s TheFork in future as there would be an active dialogue between the two of them in due course of time, says Michael.

From what it looks like, the tech giants are getting all bundled up with acquiring experience and dining portals to provide a more holistic experience to its customer base. With Airbnb acquiring Trip4real and now Tripadvisor sponsoring Eatigo, the trend is on the rise and is here to stay for a while.

Source: Tech in Asia

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As the festive season knocks at our door, the e-commerce giants take up our concrete time around these days. From Big Billion Days at Flipkart to Amazon Great Indian Festival at Amazon, all are breaking necks to attract the attention of the consumer. In the light of such opportunities, Musafir.com has also tied up with Amazon India in a unique marketing campaign this festive season.

The travel agent would offer 200 lucky winners, who shop at the Amazon Great Indian Festival, an all-expense paid couple trip to Dubai for three nights and four days.

“The festive season is all about giving, sharing and experiencing. We are extremely excited to announce our festive association with Amazon India. This unique partnership featuring one of the biggest online sales in the country with one of the biggest holiday giveaways in the history of Indian retail is our way of wishing everyone a happy festive season and a prosperous year ahead,” said Ms Giya Diwaan, CEO, Musafir.com.

Musafir.com had set its operations in India around 2010 with a target to inspire travellers to a premium travel experience. The website offers 3,000 destinations and stays in over 85,000 properties with holiday experiences and much more.

“This year we recognise and celebrate the big-heartedness that underlies festivities and have themed the Great Indian Festival asTyohar Bade Dilwala. These marathon 120 hours of the event mark our continuing commitment to work closely with marque partners like Musafir to delight customers across India. 200 lucky winners will win an all-expense paid trip to Dubai for two, and it’s the perfect present we can gift our customers this Diwali. This is an unprecedented magnitude for a travel prize, and we are very excited to give customers an experience of a lifetime as they shop on Amazon.in during the Great Indian Festival,” says Mr Manish Tiwary, Vice President, Category Management, Amazon India.

The company was founded by Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Thani, Sachin Gadoya and Albert Dias with a vision to unite smart technology along with customer satisfaction.

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