Skift Take

These startups realize anything that can go wrong while traveling, will go wrong.

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Every trip, regardless of rigor or distance away from home, comes with the possibility of unexpected problems big or small. But mobile technology has made it easier to solve these problems, and sometimes crisis situations, during a trip so travelers can focus on their adventures and not wait longer to find solutions.

>>Record360 helps protect travelers against liability when renting or sharing cars, vacation rentals, hotel and motel rooms, boats or other property while traveling. Its mobile app lets users capture video and images and makes necessary annotations from all angles of whatever is being rented. The app creates a time-stamped, geo-tagged record of property at the time of inspection that is stored in the cloud so users aren’t liable for damage they didn’t cause.

SkiftTake: This kind of technology will rely on both sides, owners and renters, using Record360’s services to ensure renters aren’t accountable for something they didn’t do and this is a long-time coming at this point.

>>HotelOverbooking provides hotels with a platform where they can find and sell their overbooked hotel rooms to other hotels matching a search criteria. Hotels can also help other hotels in the same area by bidding on hotel rooms that are overbooked.

SkiftTake: Hotel reservation systems make mistakes too, but the question is whether HotelOverbooking can place guests in a hotel that is on par with service and facility quality that offers similar experiences as the one they originally chose.

>>Travedoc is an online doctor appointment scheduling service for people living and traveling in a new country. TraveDoc lets travelers choose and schedule an appointment with qualified physicians, dentists or specialists who speaks their language.

SkiftTake: Travelers aren’t always familiar with medical standards in different countries and they need a service like Travedoc that helps them fill in the blanks and ensure them that they won’t jeopardize their health even further by seeking out medical care.

>>Fluency is a mobile app providing live, on-demand interpreters who speak more than 200 languages to help travelers connect with anybody, anywhere on their terms from their smartphones.

SkiftTake: This sounds like the ideal way to overcome language barriers but might be better suited for business travelers or companies who have money to pay the hefty user fees.

>>HotelMyPhone is a peer-to-peer mobile app letting travelers use their friends’ phones as their own if they lose theirs or if it runs out of battery life. Travelers can make calls, send text messages and access their contacts through the app.

SkiftTake: Who hasn’t been in a situation like this while traveling? HotelMyPhone won’t become your new iPhone camera for taking photos but it will help you out in case you need to reach someone in an emergency.

For all of our SkiftSeedlings collection, check out our archives here.

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Tags: skiftseedlings, startups

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