Getting a team together now they are more global, and possibly remote, is getting harder. TroopTravel aims to help with this challenge and won the Business Travel Show Disrupt Award 2018. BTiQ spoke to founder Dennis Vilovic to find out more.
When were you launched?
The company was founded in May 2017 and we launched our first product in September 2017.
How many people are working for the company?
We are two full-time founders supported by a team of strategic suppliers and advisors.
Sum up what your company/product does in one sentence.
We optimise global and local meetings for multi-origin groups in terms of cost (up to 75% saving potential) and time.
Why is it unique?
We are using big data and learnings to optimise the way you bring people based in different locations together.
Imagine, you are planning a meeting of a group distributed all over the world. How would you decide where to meet? Our platform brings different aspects together like cost, time, visa requirements, etc to find the best locations for your multi-origin group. The system works on a global as well as on a local scale.
Our case studies, for example, have shown that it can be cheaper and easier for a group of 10 people (five based in Wahsington, five based around the world) to meet for one week in South Africa than bringing five people to Washington. Current tools focus on the travel planning process after a location has been picked. TroopTravel uses big data and learning to help you find the best location to meet.
What problem does it solve?
By 2020, more than 50% of the people will work remotely. If people can work from anywhere, they can meet everywhere. Coordination of multi-origin groups are complicated and takes a lot of time. Location selections are based on personal opinions rather than on data analytics. Saving potentials of up to 75% can be achieved by comparing meeting locations properly.
What platforms is it available on and can integrate with?
TroopTravel has its own platform. We are, however, able to integrate it into other platforms or to connect different data sources (eg individually negotiated rates). Our key focus are the analytics. Thus, TroopTravel can easily be integrated into travel booking procedures because we structure data which will help a travel agent to book the trips.
What markets is it available in?
We are available globally and our team is present in Spain, South Africa, Germany, Kenya and the Netherlands.
What do travel managers like about it?
Organising a group travel for, let's say, 100 people is very complicated. Especially, if many people are coming from different starting locations. We help travel managers to create accountability on WHERE to meet as well as easily managing big multi-origin group travel. We only need starting locations of the group and our algorithms are proposing the best locations to meet. In addition, we give information about visa requirements and other elements which affects the meeting location decision. In other words, we make multi-origin group planning easy.