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The largest and most influential travel, tourism and hospitality company representatives attended the annual PhoCusWright Conference, which is the world’s biggest online travel event for the travel industry. The conference took place in Miami, Florida from November 15th to the 17th, 2011 and gathered over 1,400 people that paid on average $3,000 each to attend the 3-day Conference and Innovation summit.
Some of the speakers and panelists at the conference included: Virasb Vahidi – American Airlines, Dan Rose – Vice President of Partnerships and Platform Marketing Facebook, Dara Khosrowshahi – President and CEO Expedia, Stephen Kaufer – President and CEO TripAdvisor, Jeffery Boyd – President and CEO Priceline.com and Booking.com, Tim O’Shaughnessy – CEO LivingSocial.com, Paul Brown – President Hilton Worldwide, Brian Sharples – Co-founder and CEO HomeAway.com, Jeremy Wertheimer – VP Travel ITA Software a Google Company, Keyur Joshi – Co-Founder and COO, MakeMyTrip.com, Steve Hafner – Co-Founder and CEO, Kayak.com, John Hazlewood – founder and CEO TravelStoreMaker.com and many others.
The judges in the travel innovation competition included Kathy Misunas – former CEO American Airlines, Gregg Brockway – Co-Founder, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Tripit, Kimberley McLoughlin – Managing Director of Red Visitor, Mark Okerstrom – CFO of Expedia Inc., Debu Purkayastha – Principal, Corporate Development, M&A in Google Inc., etc.
Over 45 Venture Capital Firms attended and many participated on panels and the jury and they were all looking for the new and promising companies that came to the conference and participated in the Travel Innovation Summit to target companies for investments for the next big travel innovation.
Evature was the winner of the TravelStoreMaker.com Travel Innovation Award International Category for its innovation that enables free-text travel search for mobile, social and regular websites, increasing conversion rates and user satisfaction. The CEO of TravelStoreMaker.com, John Hazlewood announced the winner and provided the award and prize of $5000 to encourage the innovative spirit of the company in developing its Expert Virtual Agent (EVA).
TravelStoreMaker.com, founded in 2000, provides advanced Meta Search Direct Connect Online Booking Engine solutions to travel agencies, hotels, airlines, and any company desiring to sell travel B2C, B2B (Desktop Point Of Sale), B2B2C, and B2E for SME’s. Currently translated into 22 languages and licensed by travel agencies in 24 countries, TravelStoreMaker.com is a Preferred IBE provider for Sabre EMEA and Travelport Middle East and Africa. Multi GDS and with more than 150 LCC’s, 45 hotel and car providers and integrating rail, ferry and bus via a combination of direct connects and a proprietary inventory management system for direct deals, TravelStoreMaker.com can provide a Multimodal IBE, offering the capability to interline air, rail, ferry and/or bus and combine as a package displaying a single price.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
