Travolution’s start-up of the year 2015 bd4travel has won the 2016 Travel Technology Europe 2016 Disrupt Award.
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TTE 2016: Bd4travel scoops Disrupt Award
Travolution’s start-up of the year 2015 bd4travel has won the 2016 Travel Technology Europe 2016 Disrupt Award.
The Big Data personalisation platform founded by former Traveltainment chief Andy Owen-Jones, beat for other finalists after public voting whittled the original list of eight down.
Bd4travel was originally founded in Germany but now has its headquarters at the London & Partners TravelTech Lab, near London’s Tower Bridge.
Speaking after being named winner, Owen-Jones said he was delighted with the accolade that was “an endorsement of the concept”.
The firm has started collecting data in the UK and Owen-Jones said he has held talks with “two or three potential clients” including significant players in the UK market. The firm is better established in Germany where it counts among its clients Holidaycheck, the German equivalent of TripAdvisor which is heavily used by consumers in the market.
Owen-Jones said it was about time that sales technology rather than marketing technology in online retailing came to the fore.
“Long term I think we will start offering people benchmarking data. If we really know what people’s activities are we can start talking to our clients to see if they want to really disrupt some of their spend on Google.”
Owen-Jones said by providing detailed profiling of customers, modern travel companies will be able take control of their ability to reach and engage with customers, rather than has been the case in the past with businesses built on the back of platforms they don’t control, like Teletext Holidays and more latterly Google.
In winning the competition Bd4travel won free consultancy, a stand at TTE 2017 and PR and publicity support.
Another machine learning personalisation engine Olset won the people’s choice award for the most online votes and the remaining three finalists were TripRepublic, which launched its web app today, Waynaut and Yamgu.
