London-based startup Triptease has won the Travel Innovation Summit Europe Awards, hosted in Dublin by global travel market research company Phocuswright.
Triptease offers a smart ‘price check’ widget to hotels looking to take back control of their inventory from online booking engines. Shoppers see three prices for rooms from online travel agents, as well as that offered by the hotel.
Online travel agents typically take an 18% to 20% fee from hotels for selling on their behalf. Triptease takes a fixed fee based on the number of rooms and says it can increase conversion rates on its clients’ websites by 35%.
The software-as-a-service company raised $2m back in February to grow its service. It is currently working with 10,000 hotels, having just signed up a Dubai-based luxury resort group, and is hoping to grow this to 20,000.
Triptease’s chief tease, as he’s elected to be known, Charlie Osmond, is also on the business advisory board of British Airways where he leads on data personalisation efforts.
The team was chosen by a travel industry executives, including Evan Konwiser, VP of American Express Global Business Travel, and Florian Mesny, a partner at travel-focused VC firm 33entrepreneurs.
The runner up in the competition was the crowdsourced tour app Inviita, which is based in Portugal.