Booking.com, one of the world’s largest travel e-commerce companies and a digital technology leader, announced a global partnership with Web Summit. Together they will host a dedicated ‘Women in Tech’ networking and mentoring program at the flagship Web Summit event, as well as initiatives at affiliated events Collison and RISE in 2018. This exclusive collaboration continues Booking.com and Web Summit’s efforts to redress the under-representation of women in technology by creating more opportunities for women to enter, advance and thrive in the sector.

Booking.com will host the first of a number of networking initiatives for women at the Booking.com Women in Tech lounge at Collision 2018, being held in New Orleans, USA, from April 30th-May 3rd, 2018. One of America’s leading technology conferences, Collison brings together CEOs of the world’s fastest growing startups and Fortune 500 companies, alongside leading investors and media. Booking.com CEO Gillian Tans will also participate in a panel on “Sustainability in Big Business”, sharing her insights on the role of major companies in furthering global sustainability and ethical practices.

Image source: Booking.com

Web Summit 2018, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from November 5th-8th, will be the focal point of the global partnership and will feature an expanded ‘Women in Tech Mentor Program’, following the success of the inaugural initiative at last year’s event. The Web Summit 2017 women’s mentoring program attracted nearly 200 participants, with 60 high-profile mentors from across the tech sector, including Gillian Tans and other Booking.com executives.

RISE 2018 will take place on 9th-12th July 2018 in Hong Kong and is the largest tech conference in Asia. The event attracts more than 15,000 attendees each year from over 100 countries. Booking.com will host the Women in Tech networking lounge at the event.

“We are excited to partner with Web Summit again this year to build on the strong demand and engagement we saw in 2017 and to continue our efforts in driving gender diversity in tech at a global level. Recent data suggests that 90% of women working in technology across the world have experienced gender bias in the workplace and this, coupled with the lack of mentors (48%) and female role models (42%), are the top three obstacles preventing women from choosing to advance their careers in tech,” said Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com.

“We are expanding our partnership with Web Summit with marquee events in Europe, North America and Asia to continue the conversations about gender diversity and to support women through mentoring and providing more opportunities for them to collaborate, network and share experiences. This global partnership will give us another platform to help pivot gender inequalities and gaps in the male-dominated tech workplace and encourage more women from across the world to become positive role models for others.”

Web Summit runs the world’s most highly regarded technology events which bring together world leaders, Fortune 500 companies, tech giants and groundbreaking startups to examine and celebrate the latest advances in technology.

Paddy Cosgrave, CEO and co-founder of Web Summit, said: “Web Summit run the most prominent technology events in the world and we are committed to driving a positive change in the industry. We launched our women in tech initiative three years ago to increase the number of women participating at our events around the world. This commitment to change resulted in a female/male gender ratio at Web Summit of 42% / 58% for the last two years.

“We are pleased to partner again with Booking.com to further this important cause and provide a platform for raising awareness about gender equality in the tech industry globally. The partnership with Booking.com will help us provide further opportunities for female tech talent attending our events to network with and learn from some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs in the industry today.”

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Surge Conference starts next week and will feature a huge lineup of prominent speakers from different industry segments. Along with that, the event will feature a wide array of promising startups include those from travel industry. Here are some of the travel startups that you can expect at the event:

#1- Smart Check-in

As hotels try to grow smarter, many tech startups are coming up with interesting solutions to help them in the process. To simplify the check-in process for travellers, ‘Smart Check-in’ allows for mobile check-in in advance so that they don’t have to wait at front desk. It also allows room service requests and the option to register complaints through the app. Soon they will be adding the feature of keyless entry and payments through mobile payment systems.

Website

#2- NOW Bike Taxi

New local transport options are opening up and motorcycle taxis are emerging as a popular choice. NOW Bike Taxi is a service that allows people to book a bike taxi for travelling locally. Similar to cab rental apps, it allows you to book easily in few taps and offers fare calculator to give an approximate idea of the costs in advance.

Website

#3- iTraveller

iTraveller is a tech enabled holiday marketplace that allows travellers to easily plan and book their holiday packages. It connects native destination suppliers directly with the end users through the platform and eliminates all the manual steps involved in the process. iTraveller raised USD 1 million in funds last year and has received wide recognition in a short period of time.

Website

#4- Trek Hub

While there are many platforms that allow travellers to book activities and experiences at their destination, Trek Hub focuses only on adventure travellers. It allows travellers to discover adventure activities that they can choose to experience once at their destination. At present they are present in 10 popular Indian destinations.

Website

#5- EvenTraveler

This is another interesting startup that caters to a niche of travellers. EvenTraveler focuses on sports and music events all over the world and allows enthusiasts to plan their trip to the destination for the event. Be it the inaugural Australian Grand Prix F1 race or the Tomorrowland music festival in Belgium, the platform would allow you to book travel, stay, tickets and more for the event.

Website

#6- YallaStay

While at first it would appear to be another platform to book hotels, it offers a bit more than that. Hotel prices fluctuate often and travellers might find better deals once they have booked. YallaStay has an auto rebook feature which will automatically rebook your hotel at a lower price if it drops after you have booked.

Website

#7- DeckPort

If there is something that fluctuates more than hotel prices, it is the cost of flight tickets. Even if you have booked well in advance, you can’t be sure that you have ended up with the best price. DeckPort keeps a watch on your bookings and allows you to rebook if the prices drop further.

Website

#8- Explore

The trend of alternative accommodation is yet to pick up in India. Travellers are a little sceptical to book homestays and other such accommodations because of the uncertainty that comes with it. That is why this platform is trying to boost the travellers’ confidence. Unlike other platforms, their team photographs and validates the property to ensure the listings are verified. The travellers also have access to their local community manager via chat throughout the stay.

Website

#9- Attnd

There is an increasing number of professional events and workshops. It isn’t easy to keep track of every event that is relevant to you and your business. Attnd keeps track of all the business events across different categories and makes sure you don’t miss any event that is important to you.

Website

#10- DOT

Brands and governments all over the world are taking up initiatives to save the environment. DOT is a startup trying to make its contribution by offering bike taxi service using electric bikes. Along with that it is also offering delivery solutions using electric vehicles in National Capital Region.

Website

Are you building an interesting travel startup that the world should know about? We would love to hear about it. Write to us at editor@travhq.com. You can find more details about the event here.

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Last week, we had shared our list of travel tech startups who are coming to the RISE Conference. In addition to a fantastic bunch of global startups from across verticals, RISE also has a line-up of exciting speaker sessions where you will get to hear some stories on their initial days of struggle, challenges and growth.

Here is our pick of some sessions, that you certainly can cannot afford to miss.

Opening remarks by Paddy Cosgrave & Casey Lu

We are big fans of Paddy & rest of the team behind RISE and Web Summit. While RISE is being organised in Hong Kong, the Web Summit happens in Dublin and we’ve just got the word that there is an India edition called SURGE planned for next year in Bengaluru. These initial “5” minutes would set the tone for your 2 days at RISE. Be there and hear the guys behind the world’s biggest tech summit on the concept of RISE.

From West to East: Outside Making an Impact

Recent trends indicate the emergence of many startups in Singapore & Hong Kong whose entrepreneurs are from international markets such as Russia, France, UK and even US. Starting up in a different country has its own challenges in-terms of understanding the culture, the geography and the demands of the consumers. This panel session featuring Nathan Huey from SoftLayer, Sam Halse from Adyen, Allan Grant from Hired and James Griffiths from South China Morning Post will focus on How to make an impact in Asia when you are not from the region.

Line them up: Replicating Success Across Borders

This one should be a classical talk for all travel startups looking to expand beyond the geographies of their origin country. We have been meeting many startups specially in the travel planning segment who are providing offbeat experiences to their consumers. Hear LINE’s new CEO Takeshi Idezawa on how they travelled beyond Japan to countries such as Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, and the US and reach 560+ million registered users.

Searching for the Best User Experience

Travel startups which are in the space of destination marketing should focus on optimising their websites. Once users do land on their website or mobile app, the real challenge is to delight their users with visual experience. If you have a new mobile app or a website, you will learn how to improve user’s experience in this session by Shay Banon from Elastic & Jeremy Ben Sadoun from Algolia.

The key to millennial engagement

Travel or no travel, ultimately all of us are looking to reach out to our consumers. So how do you tap the digitally savvy millennial generation? Learnt it all from the cracking line-up of speakers which features Ray Chan from 9GAG, Michael Wolf from Activate & James Griffiths from South China Morning Post.

Does the best product win?

This session featuring Dave McClure from 500 Startups, Brian Koo from Formation 8, Hugo Burge from Momondo Group and Pamela Ambler from Thomson Reuters will give an overall insight from investor perspective to the attendees.

Oh wait! If you thought these are only sessions of interest, check out the entire schedule of both Days. Day 2 of the summit has some amazing tracks on 3D-control technology , wearable technology, robotic control and on branding aspects.

We can’t wait to get to RISE. If you are interested, rush to the registration page for any last minute spots

You can find more updates from RISE here.

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