Irish travel tech start-ups are flying high.
Meetings Booker, a provider of meeting venue discovery and online booking, has been named the best product winner of Enterprise Ireland’s Pioneer Travel Tech Award.
The company helps executives to discover 125,000 meeting spaces in 138 countries around the world.
Its platform is used by international hotel groups to power reservations on their own websites as well as by global corporations keen to track expenditure and make savings.
ServisBOT was named as the winner of the best pitch category. The company transforms customer service conversations through messaging, artificial intelligence and automation.
Six Irish travel tech start-ups took part in the pitch competition, including Urban Fox, ServisBOT, Culture Mee, Moby, Travaplan and Meetings Booker. Last year’s winner, Campsited (a recent Start-up of the Week on Siliconrepublic.com), recently secured $500,000 in funding from a US venture fund as part of a new €1.5m fund raising.
Up, up and away
The winners were announced at Enterprise Ireland’s annual Travel Tech Summit in Cork which showcases and recognises a new wave of high-performing Irish travel tech start-ups.
With over 100 travel tech companies in Ireland, employing over 3,500 people, Ireland has emerged as a leading travel tech hub producing global industry leaders such as CarTrawler, Datalex and OpenJaw.
“This is not only reflected in the Irish companies that have become global leaders in this space but in the strong pipeline of travel tech start-ups that Ireland is producing,” said Máire Walsh, senior vice-president of digital technologies, Enterprise Ireland USA.
“The six start-ups that participated in the pioneer travel tech pitch competition are bringing the next generation of travel tech solutions.
“The travel industry is on course to significantly grow over the coming years due to emerging markets and a growing global middle class. Ireland with its thriving travel tech industry has great potential to capitalise on this by continuing to deliver new and innovative customer engagement products and services to meet evolving customer expectations,” Walsh said.