Travelport, one of the four sponsors of the WIT Developer & Designer Challenge, has throw in the added prize of one year’s free membership of the Travelport Developer Network to the winning team.
The Network provides access to Travelport Universal API and Travelport Universal Desktop SDK and a Named Partner Technical Specialist will help the winner develop the application further and once finalized, will certify it together with a Commercial Account Manager to work to raise the visibility of the solution.
Said Jocasta Tribe, global marketing communications manager for Travelport, “At Travelport we recognise that in order to meet the hugely diverse and evolving travel distribution needs of our partners and customers, we need to adopt a product development strategy that allows us to focus on building our core capabilities in-house whilst working with a number of highly talented external developer partners, with complementary areas of expertise, to build new innovative tools on top of our platform.
“By adopting such an approach, our core technology and data assets can be used in highly creative ways by an ecosystem of developer partners to fuel rapid innovation within the industry, meeting the wide-ranging needs of our customers across the globe. This is the philosophy behindTravelport’s Open Platform strategy and solid partnerships with our Developer Community are fundamental to success.”
She added, “The WIT Developer and Designer challenge provides a fantastic opportunity for us to work in partnership with the developer community in Asia. We are excited by what the participants can build with the new Fuzzy Search capabilities of Travelport Universal API™. We are looking forward to working with our winner to take their ideas to the next level and we know there’s a lot of talent in this region.”
Each of the sponsors – Abacus Ventures, Brand Karma and VaultPad Ventures – are offering a three-month internship/coaching to the winners of their respective Challenges to undergo a “Proof of Concept”.
Travelport’s Challenge is “To develop an innovative and inspirational search application on a mobile platform using Travelport’s latest Fuzzy Search technology. The solution should enable travel agencies online and offline to increase their revenues, by providing inspiration to the undecided traveller; bookable travel choices for both flight and flight/hotel options.”
Abacus Ventures is meanwhile seeking a redesign of the travel agency point of sale and director Rani Francois-Marie Saad said that the ideal solution should “build on existing features and make the POS as friendly as possible to the travel agent” and at the same time “incorporate the traveler experience from the early stages of booking”.
“The POS should provide a well rounded experience from start to end from the point of view of a traveler.”
Timothy O’Neil-Dunne, founder of VaultPAD Ventures which is presenting its challenge to “build your dream airline website” in association with WIT, urged participants to “think different”.
“Consider a non-homogenous world for products of different sources are provided to a consumer. Think, can the sharing economy work for airline tickets? All is possible – do not let your options be constrained.”
During the process, each of the challenge sponsors will be providing support and 1:1 mentoring on the ideas and the execution. “Consider it a great opportunity to get some top grade help,” he added.
The WIT Developer & Designer Challenge is designed to spark the creation and development of new commercial applications in travel and foster entrepreneurship among developer, designer and student communities in Asia and beyond.
Finalists will have the opportunity to showcase their solutions at the WIT Bootcamp on October 21 in Singapore. Winners will be declared that day and go on to showcase their winning entries at the main WIT Conference, October 22-23,which is attended by more than 500 industry travel leaders in travel distribution, marketing and technology
Note: The four challenges can be viewed here. A second webinar to explain the WIT Developer & Designer Challenge will be held September 6, 4pm Singapore time. You can register here.
