**Update: The four finalists are noted below in bold purple text.**
The Phocuswright Travel Innovation Summit showcased 34 firms yesterday. Each has an interesting new angle on some aspect of the travel business. For me, the firms in the social scanning and fuzzy shopping categories were the most intriguing. See this post for my take on the implications for travel procurement. Continue reading
If your firm spends much on meetings and events, you should check out Meetings Analytics. This young firm does the hard and messy work of gathering, scrubbing and analyzing corporate meeting data, and then analyzes it to identify practical savings opportunities. You my think (or be told) that you already get meeting data reports from your meeting management tools or travel agencies. Hah! These guys are way ahead of those old-school reports. They report their findings in these key areas: Continue reading
Got a canceled meeting on your hands? Want to recover some of your deposit and cancellation fees? Thanks to MeetingTrader, you now have a better chance of saving some money. I spoke with Tim Brooks, the firm’s Founder and CEO, to get a better handle on just how this works. It’s early – the MeetingTrader site goes live today – but I like what I heard. This is a site that your meeting planners should get to know. Continue reading
File this under two headings: “Why didn’t anybody think of this before?” and “Tell my meetings managers about these guys!”
MeetingTrader.com sure caught my eye at the NBTA show earlier this week. Hotel industry veteran Tim Brooks founded this firm to create a market for canceled meetings. If you’ve ever been hit by a cancellation clause in a meeting contract, you’ll appreciate this service. Continue reading
Gillespie's Guide to Travel Innovation 