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 data: http://battellemedia.com/archives/2014/03/branded-data-preferences.php