InstantLocal Finalist in Marriott Travel Experience Incubator
In August, Marriott, Accenture Interactive and 1776 brought 12 finalists to Washington DC to pitch their ideas and businesses on how to improve the travel experience. The 3-month Travel Experience Incubator program is a first of its kind in the US, and received hundreds of applications from interested startups.
InstantLocal was selected as one of finalists. All finalists got the opportunity to spend a day with key team members from the incubator program to prepare. This was followed the next morning by the pitches to key executives from all three companies.
This was the first opportunity for InstantLocal promote and pitch our new artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced travel discovery app.
The program is focused in improving the guest experience. Now more than ever, travelers are seeking out something real and different, spending their money on experiences. The challenge is helping to connect the traveler to the right local options, all without the need to spend countless hours searching.
Local communities everywhere offer a great range of opportunities, but all to often it is too hard to find something you don’t already know about on social media, or find that special experience amongst all the ads and search results promoting the same chains.
With InstantLocal we are using AI to eliminate constant searching and irrelevant information, by matching the best local options to a traveler’s needs wherever they are. With a visual search and voice assistant capability InstantLocal will help a traveler connect with other travelers, and discover a whole range of local opportunities that might never be discovered otherwise.
“Travel should be exciting and offer something new, even if it is a regular business trip” says Vance Reavie, CEO. “We want to banish the ‘ don’t know what do you want to do’ arguments and get travelers out into the community.”
With local events, business offers, attractions, wellness opportunities and entertainment options combined with posts and comments from other travelers InstantLocal offers travelers a social way to find what’s happening right now and get some insights from other travelers too.
“We are working on a whole new way to discover the best local experiences, and using AI to save travelers time while making their trip unforgettable. Our app is a visual real-time tool to discover and engage, no need to use multiple websites and apps, we combine everything in one so you can spend more time enjoying your trip and less time searching.”
A key benefit of the program, startups get to develop, validate, and test travel solutions directly with the experience of Marriott International. As a leader in using data to enrich and enhance the travel experience and customer connectedness, startups benefit from the program’s curriculum, and opportunity for paid piloting and investment at its conclusion.
“Having the opportunity to introduce our new concept was a great experience, we gained a lot of insight and feedback. We look forward to the opportunity to apply again next year, with our new app going live in early 2018 we we will be ready impress.”