Eight start-ups have been announced as exhibitors as part of this year’s Business Travel Show Launchpad, each of which stand as contenders for the Business Travel Disrupt Award.
The award final will take place at the Business Travel Show at 1400 on Thursday, 22 February.
All eight start-ups will exhibit their travel solutions in the show’s Launchpad. This year’s finalists range from one-click booking and managing business travel spending to meeting space solutions and predictive flight delay.
Public voting is now open for the award. After the vote, the shortlist will be whittled down to five entrepreneurs, who will pitch to the judges in the Business Travel Disrupt Award final.
Voting can be done online at businesstravelshow.com/whats-on/disrupt-awards and closes on Monday, 12 February.
The eight Launchpad start-ups are:
- Amaze – a back-office solution that helps to improve visibility over business travel spending.
- Arbitrip – an online booking tool that helps travel managers and business travellers book and manage hotel stays.
- Flightsayer – a solution that predicts flight delays hours to weeks before departure to help travellers make better itinerary choices and respond to potential disruption.
- Gaest – an online marketplace for listing, discovering and booking unique meeting spaces. Gaest featured in the 2018 BBT Hotlist as ‘One to Watch’.
- Metaplanner – a calendar tool that enables travellers to book a business trip in one click through their work calendar.
- Trooptravel – a platform that uses data and learning to recommend meeting locations based on personal and company preferences.
- Voya – a digital TMC for SMEs that provides a smart travel assistant to all travellers.
- Wizme – an end-to-end system that brings transparency, control and order to meeting space and venue hire activities across organisations. Wizme featured in the 2018 BBT Hotlist as ‘One to Watch’.
This year’s juding panel includes BBT digital editor Molly Dyson, travel journalist Nick Easen, Business Travel iQ community and content manager Amanda Greenwood, The Business Travel Magazine editor Andy Hoskins, Fairfly co-founder and VP of sales and marketing Gili Lichtmann (last year’s Disrupt Award winner) and travel manager Nikki Rogan.
David Chapple, event director of the Business Travel Show, commented: “Each of the eight start-ups that will be exhibiting in Launchpad have been carefully chosen for their potential to disrupt the industry. There’s a quite diverse mix of solutions this year, but there is a common theme with all of them – helping businesses and travel managers save time and resources and carry out their jobs more effectively. Visitors to Business Travel Show will be amongst the first to meet this companies and discover their transformative solutions.”
Free visitor registration for Business Travel Show is now open at businesstravelshow.com/register