BUSINESS TRAVEL
businesswire | May 19, 2023
Selina Hospitality PLC the fast-growing experiential hospitality brand targeting millennial and Gen Z travelers, announces the launch of registration for the TechnoArt@Selina Global Innovation Summer Cohort. This program, in collaboration with and managed by TechnoArt, a renowned global innovation platform for startups, offers a unique opportunity for burgeoning companies.
This innovative three-week program aims to assist startups in scaling their company using Selina’s extensive network across 24 countries. Taking place at Selina locations worldwide, selected companies will gain the unique opportunity to live and work from our hotels. They'll collaborate with companies, mentors, advisors, and investors from around the globe and benefit from TechnoArt's partner network for business development, legal and financial consulting, hosting, web services, marketing, branding, and more from top tier companies such as Next.Law by Shulman Rogers, AWS, Pérez Correa González, Brandsight and more.
"At Selina, we strive to foster a vibrant, community-focused setting that unites travel, work, and networking," said Sam Khazary, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Corporate Development at Selina. "Our Corporate Development team is instrumental in this mission, acting as the catalyst that brings entrepreneurial spirit to life within our spaces. This partnership with TechnoArt underscores our commitment to support startups and innovation. It's not just about providing a space to work and live, but also about cultivating a nurturing ecosystem for learning, growth, and business development. This initiative allows us to give back to the communities we operate in, whilst simultaneously fostering the inspiration and education needed for the next generation of global entrepreneurs."
Tristan Jehan, Innovation Partner at TechnoArt, said, "In an increasingly interconnected world, we're seeing a new breed of entrepreneurs who are seeking to broaden their horizons, connect more deeply with their clients and partners online, and tap into untapped markets. This evolution, coupled with the burgeoning digital nomad community, heralds a refreshing approach to growth for tech companies. As advocates for this new wave of innovation, we at TechnoArt are thrilled to work alongside Selina's team to offer this unique program. This initiative is designed not only to bolster the community but also to facilitate innovation, no matter where it originates. By integrating work, life, and travel, we aim to create an environment that stimulates growth, fosters collaboration, and empowers entrepreneurs to thrive on a global scale."
The Selina Corporate Development team, in collaboration with TechnoArt, is committed to providing robust support to entrepreneurs and service providers keen on joining the program, either virtually or in-person. We're extending our reach across the globe through TechnoArt.LIVE Local events, hosting in dynamic cities such as Bogota, Colombia; Mexico City, Mexico; Panama City, Panama; London, UK; Lisbon, Portugal; and key US locations including Miami, Washington DC, Chicago, and New York. These gatherings serve as vital nodes in our expanding network, fostering collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and innovation. To learn more about these events and how you can be a part of this transformative journey, visit TechnoArt.LIVE.
About Selina Hospitality PLC.
Selina is one of the world's largest hospitality brands built to address the needs of millennial and Gen Z travelers, blending beautifully designed accommodation with coworking, recreation, wellness, and local experiences. Founded in 2014 and custom-built for today's nomadic traveler, Selina provides guests with a global infrastructure to seamlessly travel and work abroad. Each Selina property is designed in partnership with local artists, creators, and tastemakers, breathing new life into existing buildings in interesting locations in 24 countries on six continents – from urban cities to remote beaches and jungles. To learn more, visit Selina.com or follow Selina on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin or YouTube.
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TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
prnewswire | March 27, 2023
Brex today announced Brex travel, a premium travel management experience that delivers comprehensive booking and management capabilities, all in the Brex dashboard and mobile app, with unbiased global inventory, self-service trip changes, and 24/7 agent support.
With the addition of travel, Brex is extending Empower to provide the first, all-in-one global system that integrates card, expense management and travel in one app. Brex has partnered with Spotnana, to build its travel capabilities from the ground up on top of Spotnana's modern, cloud-based Travel-as-a-Service platform. Empower was designed to address the needs of companies as they grow, from startups through enterprise-level companies.
With business travel picking up, modern companies need an effective solution to manage global travel end-to-end. Brex delivers an integrated experience providing employees with a self-serve solution to book and manage trips. Automated receipt capture and approvals drive higher compliance and real-time visibility for finance teams. Live budgets allow them to proactively provision and track spend in real time to keep everyone accountable, within policy and on budget.
Manage travel budgets in one place.
With Brex Empower's integrated card, spend and travel management system, finance teams can create budgets and policies to manage travel across the entire company. Brex travel enables finance teams to roll out customized travel budgets across an organization, enabling individuals and teams to book travel compliant with spend policies. When all trip expenses are managed in the same budget, there is real-time visibility into how spend is trending, giving leaders the ability to manage travel spend proactively, putting travel dollars to where they have the most impact.
Employee experience drives compliance.
Brex travel delivers a consumer-grade booking experience, with an unbiased global inventory that provides employees with the most comprehensive choices and gives companies access to preferred rates. This reduces the need to book travel outside of the system, increasing adoption and improving policy compliance. With automatic approval of expenses that are in policy, managers can focus only on the exceptions while employees book their flights, swipe their card at restaurants, and check out from the hotel. And, a modern UI and easy-to-use mobile app increases employee adoption, helping keep travel in policy and in budget.
"Most employees find it hard to comply because they don't know what the policy is, and it takes a lot of effort to collect receipts and memos for every purchase," said Henrique Dubugras, co-Founder and co-CEO of Brex. "With Brex travel, you can easily see the right policy on the mobile app at the time of booking, and we automate receipt collection, memos and approvals on trips."
"Our previous solution was clunky and slow. Brex's easy-to-use platform takes the hassle out of booking business travel with built-in controls to ensure total compliance. The difference has been night-and-day." – Jeff Cullinane, Vice President of Strategy, Integration, & PMO at Satellite Healthcare
A global travel platform.
As a truly global solution, employees can book travel to anywhere in the world and access 24/7 customer support wherever they are. Brex's travel inventory is unbiased and not impacted by commissions, a common practice in the business travel industry. Brex travel increases trust and adoption by providing the most comprehensive inventory and range of choices to a business traveler — including global distribution system (GDS) fares, direct API integrations with airlines, basic economy seats, local and low-cost airlines (often left out of most travel systems), as well as hotels and car rentals in all major countries.
"Brex is an innovator that shares our passion for delivering superior customer experiences," said Sarosh Waghmar, Founder and CEO of Spotnana. "We are excited to partner with Brex and provide the core travel infrastructure that enables them to expand the Empower platform and create an end-to-end travel and expense solution."
Brex travel builds on the momentum of the Empower platform. Since launching in 2022, Empower has experienced rapid growth, onboarding hundreds of thousands of employees globally and adding hundreds of new capabilities and integrations. Empower is supported in more than 100 countries and used by companies like DoorDash, Coinbase, Indeed, Superhuman, SeatGeek, Built Technologies, and Scale AI to manage their global spend on one platform. Travel customers on Empower include GoGuardian, Miso Robotics, FMX, Satellite Healthcare, and more.
About Brex
Brex is the first fully unified global spend platform — with corporate cards, expense management, reimbursements, bill pay, and travel, all in one place. Brex makes it easy for finance teams and founders to manage every aspect of global spend at scale by empowering their employees anywhere to make better financial decisions. Brex proudly serves tens of thousands of businesses, from enterprises to startups.
About Spotnana
Spotnana powers unparalleled global travel experiences. We are modernizing the infrastructure of the travel industry in order to bring freedom, simplicity, and trust to travelers everywhere. Our Travel-as-a-Service Platform makes travel simpler and more affordable for corporations, while enabling our ecosystem of agency, supplier, and technology provider partners to increase operational efficiency, unlock new revenue sources, and accelerate innovation.
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TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
prnewswire | April 27, 2023
Trip.com, an international one-stop travel service provider, today announced it will build a joint innovation lab with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. The joint lab aims to use experts from AWS and Trip.com to develop new technologies that will improve the online travel provider's travel and services. Trip.com and AWS will combine technology resources and knowledge in cloud computing and artificial intelligence to identify and develop new ways to support Trip.com customers.
Trip.com, with its unique value proposition, offers an all-in-one suite of diversified travel products and industry-leading customer service, via its mobile-first app to users around the world.
Chen Zhang, Executive Vice President of Trip.com Group, said: "We are excited to sign an MoU with Amazon Web Services to build the innovation lab. Trip.com has worked hard to consistently develop technology to improve services and offerings for customers. The innovation lab aims to make travel more accessible and provide the ultimate experience for travellers, using the latest technology, renowned experts, and leading researchers from Trip.com and AWS."
"Trip.com is the world's leading one-stop travel service provider and a role model of global development," said Gu Fan, General Manager of Growth Acceleration of AWS Greater China. "We are honored to empower Trip.com through the joint innovation lab with our cloud services and successful practices in the fields of big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to continuously help Trip.com expand its existing business, uncover new growth opportunities and fulfill its mission to 'achieve the perfect journey' for global travelers."
The joint lab will focus on five programmes, including Artificial Intelligence, Flight Business, Hotel Business, International Business, and Cloud Technology.
In recent years, Trip.com has strengthened collaborations with AWS to improve marketing capabilities and service qualities through its advanced technology.
Trip.com has migrated more than 400 of its international business micro services to AWS, proving the model for more departments and mature business component tools to follow suit.
After migrating to AWS, Trip.com saw a significant improvement in its air ticket booking system, and reduced overall total memory consumption by more than 96%, achieving major cost savings.
During the pandemic, Trip.com successfully launched its innovative live stream campaign 'DreamNowTripLater'. By leveraging AWS services, Trip.com has a robust, high quality, and engaging live stream to showcase true travel destination experiences to customers.
AWS has also allowed Trip.com to improve connections with flight and hotel partners, by providing increasingly reliable service for users with a faster and more stable system that reaches millions of global users.
In addition, as part of the collaboration, Trip.com leverages AWS to provide training and AWS Certifications to its employees in various fields, such as cloud computing architecture, development, operations, containers, data analysis, database, security, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, which will help them upskill and innovate using cloud computing. AWS and Trip.com also collaborated to develop a four-year training plan and are expected to train approximately 2,000 employees through comprehensive training courses supported by AWS's customer service team.
About Trip.com
Headquartered in Singapore, Trip.com, a global online travel agency, offers services for flights tickets, hotels booking, train tickets, and the internet. It enhances the travel experience from a short trip to a nearby city to a long adventure across the continent, helping travelers at every step of the journey. It has connected about 1.2 million hotels and over 500 airlines in approximately 200 countries to travelers. With a committed customer service team, it offers services non-stop 24/7 and assists travelers worldwide. It also provides an all-in-one travel application with features like trip coins, app-inclusive deals, easy trip planning, the latest travel updates, and worldwide coverage.
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