Shoot My Travel are this year’s victors of the WIT Japan & North Asia 2018 Startup Pitch, powered by Amadeus.
Shoot My Travel – a global online marketplace that pairs travellers with local photographers – beat two other finalists during the Grand Finals at the Main Stage conference of WIT Japan & North Asia 2018, which took place last Friday.
Shoot My Travel has won a place at Phocuswright’s APAC Innovators of the Year programme at the Phocuswright Conference in Los Angeles (November 13-15), a ticket to WIT Singapore 2018 (October 15-17) and mentorship by Amadeus.
As part of this year’s prize, the winner will receive a one-year membership into the Phocuswright Innovation Platform, which offers access to a diverse network of advisors and its network of innovation partner events. The winner will be invited to participate in a startup day held on November 12, comprised of a three to four-hour programme that includes curated content developed by Phocuswright’s Innovation Advisory Board and Platform Partners.
The two other finalists, Airbuy – a third party platform that allows airlines and airports to optimise their duty free revenues – and Travelsify – a ‘hotel DNA’ content platform that characterizes hotels based on a unique weighted sequence of experience-defining metadata – came in closely behind.
The competition was no ‘cakewalk’ as this year’s startup entries spanned a broad spectrum of travel verticals, from tours and activities, blockchain, chatbots, meta-data, duty-free and even bike-sharing.
Said lead judge Sebastien Gibergues (Vice President Online Travel Asia Pacific, Amadeus Travel Channels), “Amadeus is always proud to support innovation in travel. The WIT Bootcamp 2018 startups presented a very broad range of ideas to enhance or disrupt part of the Travel Supply chain and the jury challenged every one of them. Shoot My Travel won this year’s competition, the business opportunity is real as the new generation of travellers values quality content to publish across their social media networks and the business model is scalable. It is now all about execution.”
