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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Packing for PhoCusWright, organising meetings and reading up on Innovators

Two weeks to go until the PhoCusWright Conference in Arizona. This year's theme is "Chaos Calls - Navigating the New". Promo video here. The BOOT will be there from Sunday night, tweeting, blogging, networking and working away. Follow me via @hughestim or track #phocuswright.

First up at the conference is the Travel Innovation Summit. The full list of companies presenting is here. A couple have already caught my eye including:

  • SilverRail - rail is long overdue for online innovation and Cameron Jones has recently joined them as their VP Commercial;
  • Everbread - I have seen a demo of this product already and the buzz behind them is super strong;
  • Vayant - though they have stood me up for interviews a few times they are also trying to change the way air searches are conducted;
  • Hipmunk - best name in online travel ever (maybe 2nd best to Appolicious). Can the product live up to the hype? Will consumers adapt to new ways to search?; and
  • Gekko.com - trying to turn review writers into affiliate businesses.

One of my favourite parts of PhoCusWright is the "PhoCusWright Surprise" which occurs when I meet an online travel start up(s) at PhoCusWright that I have never heard of but is (are) number one in their category by some reasonable measure. See stories on last year's surprises Localyte and geckogo.

If you are going to be there and are interested in setting up a meeting or an interview please email me.

If you are interested in attending you can register here but hurry. Ram Bandrinathan of PhoCusWright tells me that already the primary and secondary hotels are sold out and there are only a very limited number of conference tickets left.

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