Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2023: Grapevine

Grapevine

Headquarters: London

CEO: Jack Dow

Website: Grapevine

 Founding date: 2019

 Investment: £750,000 funding

Grapevine is a first-to-market artificial intelligence technology that identifies missed retailing opportunities from booking data, then sends personalized “right time, right channel” booking recommendations that deliver value to travelers and booking revenue for travel businesses.

We're starting with business travel where $84 billion in revenues are currently being lost to “off-platform” bookings. Think Klaviyo / Ometria for travel.

Founder Jack Dow

Strategic goals for 2023
Grapevine has three core objectives for 2023. First, to scale their client base by capitalizing on the momentum they have building in 2022 with clients in the U.K. and U.S. Second, to help clients further increase revenues and profit margins via continued product and machine learning enhancements and finally to launch their new Grapevine Premium product and further enhance value for all stakeholders: business travelers, TMCs and corporates.

Lessons learned since founding
We are continually learning - with relationships, patience and persistence as three key learnings. Relationships-wise, we’ve learned there is no substitute for meeting people in person.

Travel is an incredibly relationship-driven industry, and I have seen first-hand the value of meeting people in person at events like GBTA, BTN Innovate and BTS Europe. You also have to be patient because travel is slow! Things have been done the same way in the industry for so long that innovation doesn't happen overnight.

Persistence and resilience are also key. As a B2B startup, it is easy to get down when sales progress isn't as quick as you like. It is important to realize that everyone is busy (especially at the moment), so often no response doesn't mean no, it just means they haven't had a chance to get back to you. Make sure you are speaking to the decision-makers and keep pushing, you will get there eventually.

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