New York – TripBam CEO and founder Steve Reynolds and Whirlpool Corp. senior manager of global travel services Madia Sargent this week won the Business Travel Supplier and Buyer Innovation trophies in a competition held here as part of The BTN Group's inaugural Innovate 2014 conference.
The inaugural event, held Sept. 3-4, brought together travel buyers, suppliers and third parties for a program of presentations of business travel product and process innovation and discussions about six of the industry's biggest challenges.
Reynolds won for his company's approach to reducing hotel pricing and Sargent for her effort to create an advanced mobile corporate portal.
Competitors for the Business Travel Innovation Supplier Trophy included Olset founder and president Gadi Bashvitz; CSI GlobalVCard chief product officer Jason Kolbenheyer and COO David Disque; TSI managing director Rick Kumpf and vice president of business development DeAnne Dale, who presented TravelAudit; Sabre director of corporate and global agency sales for TripCase Kristine Peacock, who presented Sabre TripCase Corporate; Travel and Transport general manager Michelle Holmes, who presented the Points 2 Points gamification program; and Mozio founder and CEO David Litwak. Suppliers whose applications were selected by The BTN Group to compete in the competition were charged a fee to participate.
Competitors for the Business Travel Innovation Buyer Trophy included Bridgewater State University institutional travel coordinator Gregory DeMelo and Goodman Networks director of travel Karen Hatch. There was no charge for the buyer participants selected by The BTN Group.
Travel technology consultants Norm Rose and Ellen Keszler, PhoCusWright managing director Tony D'Astolfo and Microsoft senior travel manager Eric Bailey judged the competition and awarded honorable mentions to Olset and Mozio.
Task forces comprised mostly of corporate travel buyers helped design and lead think tank discussions aimed at advancing business travel developments in six areas: the sourcing of hotels, airlines and TMCs, building a better booking tool, maximizing mobile opportunities and travel policy development and deployment. The BTN Group will create white papers based on the task forces' work and think tanks' recommendations that it will share with participants and the industry.