Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Announcing the winners of EyeforTravel’s Startup Awards 2015

Last week saw 12 startup finalists compete in the final of EyeforTravel’s Startup Awards as part of EyeforTravel’s inaugural Startup Village in San Francisco. 

From mobile concierge’s to the equivalent of Tinder for travel, the final saw a diverse range of exciting new online travel companies each deliver a 10 minute pitch to the expert panel of judges. 

It was an intense afternoon, but after much deliberation, the winner and runners up were announced at the evening networking drinks reception.

The two runners up were – 

AFRICA BOOKINGS LTD.

  • A B2C channel for online bookings for accommodation across Africa for Consumers to get best choice and best rates. This is almost unheard of in many parts of Africa so they are pioneering there what is commonplace elsewhere in the world.
  • A B2B channel for agents across Africa and worldwide to access our accommodation, make bookings and earn commissions. www.africabookings.com

FLYR
FLYR, Inc. is a data science company first conceived to relieve a universal pain point among travelers — the guessing game of booking airfares. By aggregating and analyzing billions of data points, FLYR has created Foresight, a proprietary prediction engine, allowing for ultra - relevant fare forecasts and providing immediate benefits to travelers  http://flyrlabs.com/

And the winner?  Stockholm based booking platform for event venues and meeting spaces, stole the top slot with their innovative platform for aggregating unique venues.  

SPACEBASE
Spacebase are a global booking platform for event locations and meeting spaces. They give renters access to unique locations for their next event and enable space providers to advertise their space to a ready-to-book user base. www.spacebase.com 

The awards judges included: - 

Matt Zito, Managing Partner, Travel Startups Incubator, LLC
Kevin McLaughlin, Founder & CEO, Ticket Project 
Cameron Yuill, General Partner, Structure Capital
Zaid Al Husseini, VP Product, Gogobot

Well done to Spacebase, Africa Bookings and FLYR and a big thanks to all those involved!

To be informed of the 2016 edition of EyeforTravel's Startup Village, email gina@eyefortravel.com