Whilst bank credit is drying up, canny investors still have huge potential to back fast growing, fast performing companies. Of course this is full of risks, so why not learn from 4 of the best VCs in the business and see how to discover, analyze and invest in carefully selected budding travel companies.. all with potentially massive futures.

Published: 08 May 2008

Whilst bank credit is drying up, canny investors still have huge potential to back fast growing, fast performing companies. Of course this is full of risks, so why not learn from 4 of the best VCs in the business and see how to discover, analyze and invest in carefully selected budding travel companies.. all with potentially massive futures.

The 18 innovative companies have been selected to pitch to 4 of the industry’s biggest investors at EyeforTravel’s inaugural Innovation Initiative this May 20 and 21 at the Business Design Centre in London.

Please do come along to watch the process (for free) by registering here
http://events.eyefortravel.com/tds/expoandseminar.asp

Modeled on the popular TV show, Dragon’s Den, the 18 selected innovators will pitch their ideas to five ‘dragons’ - investors who have all had major successes in building or investing in travel companies are all looking to extend their portfolio. They include:

• Dick Porter, Co-founder & Director, STA Travel
Dick started STA Travel in the seventies and grew it into a US$1.2 Billion organization employing 2600 people in over 90 countries. Now on the STA Travel board he devotes his time to finding and funding start ups that could replicate such a massive growth.
• Hugo Burge, Founder, Howzat Media
Whilst building Cheapflights into an international flight comparison site, Hugo founded Howzat Media investment fund. Investments include WAYN.com, Zoomf.com, TrustedPlaces.com
• Jason Katz, Founder, KP Capital
UBS's youngest Managing Director, now runs his own private equity fund devoted to investments in the global leisure sector. Jason was involved in the Hilton and Thomas Cook transactions as well as selling lastminute.com to Sabre and Active Hotels to Priceline.
• Gerry Samuels, CEO, Travel Capital
Gerry co-founded Gradient Solutions that was acquired by Sabre. Travel Capital invests in companies, with funding requirements ranging from MBO/MBI down to early stage funding. The investment capital is sourced principally from Travel Capital's Founders, and from anetwork of partners within the institutional private equity world.
• John Kent, CEO, youtravel.com
John has been a serial entrepreneur and has managed to build value both as an executive and as an entrepreneur. John founded youtravel.com in February 2006 and the business is expected to reach a turnover of €70m in its first year of operations. Previous positions include lastminute.com UK MD, travelbargains.com CEO and Medhotels.com

The event will be chaired by David Scowsill, Chairman, Yuuguu – a seasoned travel industry veteran and investment expert who is currently on the board of four Private Equity and Venture Capital backed businesses: Yuuguu Limited, World Hotels, VenereNet SpA and On the Beach Holidays. He has been interim Sales and Marketing Director at easyJet airlines, Group Marketing Director at Manchester Airports Group, and CEO of Opodo, the pan-European online travel agency. His executive career includes British Airways, Hilton International and American Airlines.

The Entrepreneurs and the times of their pitches are as follows:

20th May – 10:00am B2B COMPANIES

10:00 Company: Digital Visitor
Overview: Anthony Rawlins, founder of Digital Visitor would like to present their new offering to their leisure and tourism industry – Visitor Review. Visitor Review is a world first – allowing leisure and tourism providers to take advantage of user generated content in text, photos and videos formats.

10:10 Company: Travelist
Overview: TraveList's unique Online Marketplace is addressing a major need of small/medium travel companies in the online arena. How to compete with top online players?
TraveList's B2B2C marketplace allows small/medium travel suppliers and agencies to compete and bid their travel products online, resulting in a travel meta-search engine, price comparison and online booking for consumers, all on a single platform.

10:20 Company: Vestibule Solutions
Overview: Vestibule Solutions develops products and services for the Travel Industry. Elina, an innovative Hospitality Management Suite integrates PMS, booking engine, pricing and promotions, e-Marketing, CRM, and more within one unified system. Elina eliminates expensive interfaces and resource draining IT “fixes”; bringing hotels the Sales and Marketing PMS of the future!

10:30 Company: European Rail - independent train holidays
Overview: Recognising the impact of the internet on ticket sales, 3 years ago we launched a series of independent rail holidays www.eRail.co.uk based on 20 itineraries from London around Europe which are completely flexible. We recognise these innovative holidays require substantial resources including educational, marketing (printed media, radio, internet & website) and other technology to streamline the internal process. To resource this capital outlay is the reason for this pitch.

10:40 Company: Zimbie (Tssg.org)Overview: Zimbie alerts subscribers over Instant Messaging of offers and promotions which are specific to their interests. By leveraging the presence facility of IM along with its instantaneous nature, make it a powerful tool, especially in marketing deals and promotions of perishable items in the travel industry. As we make the offering very specific to users interests, it becomes an opt in, permission based service. As it is two-way, it’s a tool that allows users interact with the brand and makes communications very relevant and specific.

10:50 Company: Round Trip Systems
Overview: With 1 in every 7 agencies forecast to disappear this year and with many others running at a loss, the Travel Industry is in crisis as economic uncertainty bites. Shedding cost and improving customer experience is vital to survival. TravelDesk automates customer email and phone requests from search right through to booking and payment. No browser, no live agent – but a true revolution in travel self-service. TravelDesk from www.RoundtripSystems.com

11:00 Break for Coffee

11:30 Elounda
As the world both on individual & corporate level is turning passionately to Social Responsibility, Environmental Ethics & Sustainable Development, it is least expected that the Travel Industry must follow with Character, Density and Essence. Decode Your Values, refers to an effort of explaining, understanding and engaging in the Legacy of Values provided by our Ancient Ancestors worldwide, to be implemented for the Greater Social Good today. Destinations & Properties that embrace adopt & practice, those Values will become the Trading Components of the Travel Agency.

11:40 Company: Sunverse
Overview: Founded in 2007, Sunverse aims to work with organisations and business partners globally to help them deploy 360 degrees panorama in Virtual Worlds and/or build the most interactive real mirror image (3D) of the worlds interesting places for the Global Audience. Online representations of real-world environments are known as mirror worlds, which reflect the actual world but have the benefit of additional information such as GPS-enhanced mapping or annotated notes, pictures, or videos.In each location visitors can interact with other visitors and enjoy the life-like amazing tourist destination. Each Virtual World mimics the real world with scaled-down versions of real-life edifices (buildings, roads etc.) and actual interaction with other tourists. Subscribers will have the ability to walk through the entire tourist world just as in the real environment. To keep people coming back for more, our technology allows new applications to be quickly added. As a media platform, we can scale and grow to meet the needs and demands of travelers and businesses without straining environmental, human and physical resources. The ability to form communities and make online friends within, it will serve to strengthen subscriber loyalty.

12:00 Lunch Break

B2C COMPANIES

13:30 Company: Socruise.com
Overview: www.socruise.com will create the worlds largest social cruise community. There will be loads of special features on the website like: socruise TV socruise blog, podcasts socruise reviews customers can create a online personal profile and give details like age, where they live, interests, uploads their cruise photo's, favourite cruise holiday, favourite cruise ship, next cruise holiday, what cruise's they have been on.

13:40 Company: Travel Acquaintance
Overview: . Your Tour. Recently Henry H. Harteveldt Vice President, Forrester Research summarized the problem facing online travel agencies by saying: . . “ Online travel agencies rely on the same approach they used a decade ago: they require shoppers to type in their travel dates and locations and wait for a list of options that may or may not fit their budgets or needs. ”. . “ Nowhere can you say, ‘I have this amount of money to spend on a trip. These are my interests. This is where I live. Show me my options’ ”. As an answer to this problem YourTour.com developed an intelligent tour engine application to plan fully-customized holiday trips.

13:50 Company: Ta with you
Overview: Mobile phone service that translates language for you so you can use it on your travels.

14:00 Company: James Publishing
Overview: We launched World Reviewer in October 2007. World Reviewer is an online publisher of inspirational holiday content, with an advertising business model.

14:10 Company: Off2.com
Overview: OFF2.COM is a travel social networking portal allowing members to book a host of travel related products. OFF2 allows members to share travel photos with their friends and the online community, review destinations and establishments, and be rewarded for their activity in the community.

14:20 Company: Tripsay.com
Overview: TripSay you choose to trust. We help you to find the travel information from all over the web as well as other travelers, all filtered by your trusted contacts. The ultimate solution for your travel information needs. is your personalized, ever growing travel guide constantly updated by the people

14:30 Company: Planet
Overview: Planet is a niche travel company specializing in extreme and adventure sports holidays, one of the fastest growing sectors in the Travel Industry. Planets strengths are its strong brand, loyal customer base, huge expandability and strong internet presence. This already profitable and very busy business is looking for investment in IT, infrastructure and marketing to bring its niche product to the wider national and international market place.”

14:40 Company: Travel.co.uk Ltd
Overview:. Travel.co.uk - Launching in June this year using the www.travel.co.uk URL, the owners claim they will take meta-search and comparison shopping sites to a new level. By addressing the concerns of suppliers and retailers that existing sites focus too much on comparing price rather than comparing the features and benefits of the products, and improving the customer journey from searching through to making a booking, travel.co.uk aims to quickly establish itself as a leading travel website that offers suppliers, retailers and consumers a new and valuable proposition.

14:50 Company: WhoseinTown.com
Whosintown is an online service enabling the modern business traveller to extract more value out of each business trip. It automatically informs travellers about opportunities to meet with existing and new business contacts, thereby virtually eliminating unproductive time in their travel schedules.

15:00 Company: PrivateFly
Overview: Innovation Initiative. PrivateFly is an online private jet booking network. Founded by a former RAF pilot, Adam Twidell, PrivateFly combines market price comparison with an online auction house allowing customers direct access to Europe’s 650 charter companies. . . Before the launch of PrivateFly (Sep 07), the private jet customer could only book directly with an operator or use a traditional broker. PrivateFly brings transparency and is lowering the price of jet travel by:. . Scouring the entire market – access to 650+ operators in Europe & Middle East.

15:10 Company: myTripBook.com
Overview: myTripBook is an online travel diary, linked to those of friends on the site. Members can share past trips and future travel itineraries, including trip notes, photos, videos and recommendations: travel knowledge. They can also make bookings on the site. The diary can be shared through other websites and social networks. New site launching shortly.

15:20 Company: Take the Family Ltd
Overview: Take the Family operates the UK’s leading family travel portal, www.takethefamily.com, to enable family holidays and breaks that last a lifetime. Key customers are family focused travel partners, offering services within the UK and abroad, who have enjoyed consistent growth in parent referrals since the site’s launch in 2004.

To watch the pitches and discover what will be hot (or not!) in 2009 and beyond, register for free today at http://events.eyefortravel.com/tds/expoandseminar.asp