A seamlessly connected travel journey has been an ambition of travel companies
for years.
Now Journera and
CEO Jeffrey Katz say they can deliver it.
The launch of Journera TripSignals means airlines, hotels,
transportation companies and other travel providers can share data with one
another – for customers that give that permission - to reduce the friction on
travelers as they move through their journey.
The system connects data from travel brands’ systems, such as
CRM and CRS, so each supplier has a view of the itinerary, real-time status,
loyalty programs and more.
Subscribe to our newsletter below
TripSignals links those multi-brand
and multi-component signals so participating brands can incorporate them into
their apps.
Journera says travel providers also can use these real-time signals to monetize the journey along the way, through
commissions for shared signals as well as new service offerings customers can
consider as they book and while they travel.
“Travelers value the benefits of connected data, such as seeing
where their flight is coming from, the status of their checked bags and when
their hotel room is ready prior to check-in,” said Katz, the founding CEO of
Orbitz before starting Journera in 2016.
“But travel has never had a genuine, real-time view of the customer journey to
enable a truly integrated journey experience, from flight to hotel to ground
transportation to dining and entertainment. With TripSignals, we are giving
brands the ability to extend their customer experience in real time and open up
new revenue opportunities throughout the journey.”
Katz said he expects TripSignals will
initially see uptake from brands “with partnerships who want to demonstrate a
new level of innovation … Other customers who have expressed interest are those
who practice Agile methods. They have in-house tools already built like
analytics or personalization or big cloud data tools and want to use them to
create a benefit across the whole journey, not just within their own brand.”
The idea of connected trips has excited online travel agencies
for years. Booking Holdings CEO and president Glenn Fogel spoke of it in
February during the company’s fourth-quarter and full-year
earnings report call with investors.
“The mobile app is an important platform, because it allows us
more opportunities to engage directly with travelers, and, ultimately, we see
it as the center of our connected trip vision,” he said.
The sticking point, however, has been convincing companies to
share data.
An effort underway in Europe known
as EONA-X could give travelers there the option to book all
legs of their trip in a single platform as soon as summer 2024. The
collaboration came about following proposed European Union regulations to
require airlines and train operators to share their data with third parties as
part of an overarching goal to become carbon neutral by 2050.
Journera will be testing whether that level of cooperation is
possible without a government mandate.
The Chicago-based company already has a stable of partners —
including United Airlines, American Airlines, Hilton, InterContinental Hotels
Group, Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels Corp. — that account for nearly
half of all travel in the United States.
Journera says those partners give TripSignals a head start by
providing access to more than 354 million customers and 768 million
reservations that can be captured and anonymized through the platform.
Journera was one of PhocusWire’s Hot 25 Startups
for 2020. Last June the company raised $10 million in
Series B-1 funding to bring its total funding to more than $36 million. In
December it announced the launch of Journera Audiences,
which uses first-party airline and hotel data gathered from its commercial
partners to help destination marketing organizations create strategies based on
historical and future bookings.