Startup Spotlight: Tripomatic: A Visual Trip Planning Experience
Planning for a trip is getting better and better with many new innovative applications flowing in. Some applications target to inspire travellers, some offer reviews, some offer things to do in a place, some offer budget / homestay accommodation etc. If you are looking for a pre-defined itinerary or create your own itinerary for your trip by looking at maps that have attractions / accommodations pinned in it, then you should be looking at Tripomatic, Czech Republic based startup.
Startup Spotlight: Make It Social: Group Booking In A Button Click
In a trip’s planning stage, one of the core processes that has still not been automated is – group booking. How many times have you noticed this in travel websites – “For bookings of more than 10 people, call our call center 1800-ABC-DEFG”? How about automating the group booking? And to spice it up, how about adding a social angle to the entire process? Scotland based startup Make It Social is trying to address these critical solutions. Our interview with Make It Social is below.
Startup Spotlight: The Other Home: Provides Homestay, Vacation Rental & Outdoor Adventure Services In India
Non-Hotel based accommodation business is booming globally and India is no exception to this trend. India based travel startup ‘The Other Home‘ has nailed this market and they provide various other add-on services apart from the core business of providing non-hotel accommodation. We discussed with Jaspal Singh, Co-Founder of The Other Home about their business and revenue model, competitors, their unique ‘bunny’ mascot. Interview below.
Startup Spotlight: MyTravelDoc: Connecting Travelers And Doctors
One thing that is common among every single person in this planet is to take good care of their health. Especially during travel, this aspect becomes increasingly important – be it leisure trip or business. But, what happens when a traveler falls sick during travel? To worsen the case, falling sick on a foreign land? How to reach out to the nearest hospital / doctor? How to ensure the reliability of service provided in an unknown place? Mytraveldoc, a
Startup Spotlight: Trip Tern – India Based Global Trip Planning Service
The most time consuming and confusing part of a travel is the planning stage. Decisions like – where to go, when to go and how to go takes a lot of traveler’s time at planning stage. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a website help you in generating an itinerary for your trip? India based Trip Tern provides this service. We had the opportunity to meet Shailendra Sason, Co-Founder of Trip Tern.
MyVR: Helping Rental Owners To Take Their Properties To Travelers
Vacation rental is clearly a business that anyone who owns a space can plunge into. It all started with airbnb and torrents of websites have evolved since then. Assume you have a place to rent out to, with the evolution of so many vacation rental sites and with the new age weapon called social media,
Startup Spotlight: OneAssist’s TripAssist: Say Goodbye To Bad Trip Experiences
Trips are all about memories. And memories can be good or bad. No traveler wants to experience the latter. A good trip experience is created by seeing breathtaking places, staying at a hotel of your choice, enjoying the local food etc. A bad trip experience is created when something unexpected happens. This could be – losing the wallet during travel, losing mobile, even passports or any other travel documents. How many of us have had a bad trip? Many? How do we convert our bad trips into good ones? That’s the service “OneAssist Consumer Solutions” is trying to achieve.
Startup Spotlight: Ramyam Intelligence Lab: Powering Rich Customer Experience
In the past, present or future, customer experience is one thing that a travel company could not / cannot afford to lose. Money spent to retain customers are higher than to get new customers. Companies are working very hard to offer unique solution offerings to enhance customer experience. Few offer a great booking experience, few offer royal hospitality during stay and the list goes on. Assume that you are searching in a travel website for holiday packages to Malaysia, you are searching for 15 minutes and haven’t made
Startup Spotlight: TravelKhana: Order Food Online While Booking Your Train Journey
How many of you have travelled long distance (more than 6-8 hours) in Indian trains? During the journey, many of us had dreamt of having hot lip-smacking food. Wouldn’t it be great to order food of your choice online while booking your train ticket so that it can be delivered at your seat in train? That’s exactly the service TravelKhana offers to train travellers. TravelKhana was founded by Pushpinder Singh and Matteo Chaimpo. We had the opportunity to discuss with Pushpinder (IIT-BHU, BITS, Pilani) on TravelKhana’s offerings. Read on to know more.
Startup Spotlight: GlobalTHEN: Ensuring "WOW" Customer Experience Through Education
In the fast paced travel industry, everyone must have experienced a bad customer service at least once. The bad experience could have been in a hotel because of an unfriendly housekeeping staff, because of a car driver’s inflated billing and money demand, because of a bus conductor’s negligent attitude towards tendering exact change. Can these bad services be corrected and converted into a “wow experience”? Will we as a customer get the right service that we are supposed to get for the money we pay? Answer is: Yes. That’s exactly GlobalTHEN is trying to achieve.
Startup Spotlight: TheGreenerPastures – Travel With Them To Conserve And Sustain Northeast India
India is a country of 28 union states and 7 union territories. But, how many states have we visited as part of tour / vacation / holiday? Among this 28 states, there are definitely tier-1 / most-popular states for tourism. At the same time, there are some states that are least explored, least travelled, least known. Wouldn’t it be great if you could live in the rural Assam for a week and experience the ground life of locals? How about a great north eastern wildlife tour? But, who knows the North East India the best? Meet TheGreenerPastures. They are a travel company that offers travel package products for 7 North East states that are least travelled, least explored, least known.
Startup Spotlight: TripButler – Online Abroad At Local Costs
If there is one thing that’s a MUST in everyone’s life – its travel. Everyone travels. Some travel abroad. While on the move (esp on a trip to foreign land) – increasing number of traveller’s are in the need of accessing internet to do various things – check mail, browse things to do in the place they are in, check directions, post trip pictures/feedback, social network. But, roaming internet rates are insanely priced. And, the place/hotel that you are in might not even have internet facility. What will travellers do in this situation? There is a clear need for internet-on-the-go-even-if-its-on-foreign-land. This is exactly what TripButler promises to customers.
Startup Spotlight: Thrillophilia : Jump Into The Land of Adventure Sports & Innovative Corporate Outbounds
Bored by the usual corporate outing of movie + bowling combo? Need activities to do apart from the usual trekking, fishing etc? Need a master list of kickass adventure sports around Bangalore and other parts of India? Want to just get on less explored lands and engage in very unique team building activities and games? You don’t have to worry anymore, all these can be found in a single place and it’s called “Thrillophilia”. We met the founders of Thrillophilia – Abhishek Daga and Chitra Gurnani Daga – a married (did we say it was on Feb 14)
Startup Spotlight: FACT-Finder : Powers Travel Portals With Semantic Search
Earlier in this month, we reviewed FACT-Finder Travel, a product that powers semantic search in travel portals. FACT-Finder is a Germany based company that has products for e-Commerce business, one of the product is FACT-Finder Travel. We had the opportunity to discuss with Elzbieta Marta Dokurno, International Marketing, FACT-Finder. Elzbieta speaks about the company, its travel industry product right from the conception stage.
Startup Spotlight: mygola : Planning a Trip? Let mygola Do It For You
What’s the most time consuming and tedious process in a Trip? Is it the trip planning stage? or booking stage? or trip sharing stage? mygola confidently puts its bet in the “Trip Planning” stage. Mygola was founded by Anshuman Bapna (Ex-Googler, Stanford & IIT Bombay Grad, CEO of mygola) and Prateek Sharma (IIT Bombay, COO of mygola). We met one of the founders (Prateek Sharma) of mygola at their office. The office atmosphere was
