As part of its drive to nurture and partner with travel start-ups in APAC, Amadeus, through its Amadeus NEXT programme, held a Bangkok Startup Weekend from July 24-26. The NEXT programme aims to leverage on the company’s technology, expertise, reach and funding to evolve new and original ideas in travel.
Held in partnership with Tech Sauce, a Bangkok-based technology startup organisation, the 54-hour event saw more than 55 participants including developers, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts come up with original and pioneering ways to address travellers’ pain points and improve the travel experience.
Amadeus NEXT nutures and mentors APAC startups. (Image credit: victorass88/ iStock
Amadeus equipped participants with industry expertise and coaching from in-house experts as well as access to the Amadeus Travel Innovation Sandbox, a set of APIs to access Amadeus content for testing and prototyping.
“Travel and technology are two of the fastest moving industries that exist today. We know that fresh, innovative and often disruptive ideas are constantly being generated from start-ups across the region. That is why it is so exciting to support this event and be able to listen to, learn from and work with talented individuals, and together envisage innovative ideas that could potentially revolutionise our industry,” said Simon Akeroyd, Amadeus vice president, corporate strategy and business development.
Amadeus NEXT also drives an internal culture of new idea development and lean thinking through internal hackathons and a start-up academy.
Globally, Amadeus invests more than 15% of its revenue each year towards R&D and innovation, and has a dedicated Amadeus Venture Fund that offers early stage minority investments in start-ups.
