Lightbulb by Jago Pauwel under the Creative Commons license
I was proudly invited to hold a ‘lunch ‘n’ learn’ session with the Google Travel team today to address the question of whether there is real innovation happening in the travel sector. Google has had a long history of engaging with start-ups early on and it is great to see that this ethos continues as their empire grows. My mission was to convince them that there is indeed innovation taking place, and that it is small, nimble start-ups that are leading the way. Of course, I wanted to prove my point by sharing some of the developments taking place on Zoombu.
Our propriety travel search engine technology can search through thousands of routes across multiple modes of transportation and recommend the cheapest, fastest or greenest end-to-end route. There is real innovation taking place on the technology side with our search and routing algorithms and this will be the first time true end-to-end travel search is available to consumers, helping them to pick through the confusing array of travel options. This is certainly not a trivial nut to crack and it requires vision, real engineering, a good dose of hard work and dedication to pull off. It also takes time….but nobody said that innovation happened overnight!
Recent discussions on the likes of Alex Bainbridge’s blog have also challenged the state of innovation in the travel industry and whether the ‘travel 2.0′ era has actually hit yet. With Zoombu and a few other exciting developments we are privy to in this sector, I know that the travel industry will change markedly in the months and years to come. The typical time lag for innovation to hit mainstream is 18 months…so look to the start-ups now to see the shape of the future of travel.
- Posted by Rachel
