by mcoletta | Mar 11, 2014 | Other Events |
This Friday 3/14/14 at 3:00PM EST I’ll be participating in a Hangout On Air (HOA) with the Google Travel team, discussing travel startups and addressing trends, innovation and opportunities. Fellow panelists include Samantha Shankman from Skift and Nikki Cohen from Bonvoyaging. Tune in here! https://plus.google.com/events/cfp9fkq1rrbb9dqt04qgeodd7fg Update: The recording of the webinar is available to watch here: https://plus.google.com/events/c8muu60onc6ik9k7adj2htbvusc A few notes: Topics we touched on include: Mobile as the biggest trend affecting travel (importance of design, post-PC era, the “always connected traveler”, investment activity) The sharing economy as the second biggest trend (enabling secondary businesses, impact on incumbents, investment activity) How entrepreneurs identify and address market needs (stories from Nikki and Mike) Building an audience, raising money (friends/family, debt, crowdfunding, angel/VC) Investment activity (B2B vs B2C, mobile-first, sharing economy, last minute, tours & activities, metasearch) Shift from web to mobile (trends, opportunities, companies who are doing it right) Internet of Things (connectivity everywhere, smart devices/wearables, opportunities) Big data and personalization (serendipity, privacy, complexity, how startups can use) Social media (opportunities to build a brand, ROI) A few links that I mentioned: Travel 2.0: http://www.meetup.com/Travel20 Travel Startup Roundup: http://www.travelstartuproundup.com Crowdfunding for a travel startup: http://www.tnooz.com/article/crowd-funding-lessons-for-travel-startup/ John Battelle article on...
by mcoletta | Mar 6, 2014 | NY TravFest, Travel 2.0, Travel+SocialGood |
I am helping to produce the 2nd annual New York Travel Festival on April 26, 2014 at Bohemian National Hall. My groups Travel 2.0 (Co-Organizer) and Travel+SocialGood (Committee Member) are both holding events in conjunction with the festival, and each will offer travel entrepreneurs and companies some fantastic visibility opportunities. Call For Presentations and Participants At “Travel 2.0 @ NYTF” We still have spots open for innovative travel startups and companies to collect helpful feedback and showcase what they are working on to the tech-savvy, immersive audience of the New York Travel Festival. Participants will have two opportunities: 1) Give a presentation to the audience to demonstrate your product 2) Set up at a table with latptops, tablets etc to interact 1-on-1 and go into more detail on your product with attendees All participants will also receive promotion via nytravfest.com and the festival’s social media channels. We expect dozens of people in the room at any one time, especially for the presentations. This will be similar to the typical Travel 2.0 event format in that it is a forum for young travel companies to get feedback and exposure, but on a larger scale. Details on the audience: In addition to the Travel 2.0 audience, the NY Travel Festival attracts hundreds of consumers, media and industry. Consumer attendees are generally younger (25-40), a third have incomes over $100,000 a year, and a great portion of them take at least one international leisure trip a year. Media attendees range from niche bloggers to editors of major publications. Industry attendees include primarily tourism boards, PR agencies and suppliers. More details here: http://nytravfest.com/travel-2-0-at-nytf Call For Presentations at Travel+SocialGood...
by mcoletta | Feb 21, 2014 | Travel 2.0 |
This Tuesday Feb 25th I’ll be hosting the first Travel 2.0 of 2014! I’m thrilled that we’ll have Ryan Frankel of VerbalizeIt giving a presentation at The Hatchery in Times Square. In November, VerbalizeIt was named the winner of this year’s “Most Innovative Startup Company” at PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit. I was honored to be named alongside Ryan as one of PhoCusWright’s “Young Leaders Under 35”. This event is sponsored by TripCase and Uber. TripCase is a fantastic mobile app to help you organize your travels, and Uber is a private car service that is providing our group free rides to and from the Travel 2.0 venue! Click here for details: http://www.meetup.com/Travel20/events/166074022/ Hope to see you this...
by mcoletta | Feb 17, 2014 | Travel+SocialGood |
This Thursday Feb 20th I’ll be helping to host the first Travel+SocialGood event since our conference in September 2013. Partnering with Social Media Week NYC, T+SG will host a panel discussion called: “Transparency in Travel: Who Do Consumers Trust? The Brand, The Media or The Influencer?”. Moderated by Michaela Guzy, Editor-In-Chief of Oh the People You Meet, our panel will include top travel professionals sharing their thoughts on this very relevant topic. Our Panelists include travel personality Lee Abbamonte, Emily Garvey, Director of Global Digital Marketing at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and AFAR Magazine Co-Founder Joe Diaz. Join us at WeWork, hosted by DevShop for a night of awesome discussion with like-minded individuals as we navigate the nexus of travel, technology and social good. Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-serve basis. Please click here to RSVP on Eventbrite:...
by mcoletta | Feb 11, 2014 | Trends |
I’ve been a believer in the power of mobile devices to help people organize and access information since 1999 after purchasing my first consumer mobile device, the Royal Davinci, and using it on a daily basis. The Palm Pilot had made it’s appearance not long before, in 1997. I enthusiastically upgraded to the (incredible at the time) Compaq iPAQ in 2000 and have owned a long series of mobile devices ever since. In my view, nothing especially game-changing happened in consumer mobile technology between 1997 and 2007. It was a period of experimentation and attempted innovation. Being a PC guy for most of my life, I generally bought Windows Mobile phones, and while every new phone seems cutting edge and impressive at the time of release, for the most part they were just more of the same. It still shocks me how Microsoft botched the mobile opportunity. And sure Blackberry had a good run, but also ultimately failed to deliver on the true promise of the smartphone. The release of the iPod itself in 2001 certainly set the stage for Apple to incubate the mobile revolution. But to me, the day that the iPhone was released (January 9, 2007) was the day that the world and our lives actually began a radical technology-driven transformation. Symbolically, the same could be said about the advent of Google search, and of course many other recent technologies. But the reason the high-quality smartphone is ultimately more significant to me is that it puts the entire world in our hands, including everything that Google can find for us and so much more, and enables us to carry it with us 24/7. The...
