Travelocity Founder Tries to Avoid Missteps in Launch of WayBlazer
Skift Take
Despite Terry Jones entering the travel inspiration space with lots of smart-computing power, plenty of dollars and few illusions, success could be daunting. Is the technology remarkably better than those of competitors, and will the solutions be a priority for often-overwhelmed tourism boards and hotels?
Terry Jones, the founder and first CEO of Travelocity and the former chairman of Kayak, is wading into an arena, the travel inspiration sector, littered with carcasses.
PhoCusWright found that from 2005 to 2013 the travel inspiration startup sector, including social travel, trip-planning, discovery and guidebooks, was the second-largest category of travel startups created at nearly 200 entrants, but these inspiration-oriented startups were near the bottom of the heap — just slightly above the events and tours and activities category — in terms of average funding per company and funding for the sector as a whole.
Many travel inspiration startups have flamed out or failed because they were too far-removed from transactions or were doing things that dozens of other startups had already tried.
With all of his experience, Jones isn't naive about the travel inspiration landscape and his startup, WayBlazer, co-founded with acting CEO Manoj Saxena, former general manager of IBM Watson and managing director of Entrepreneurs' Fund IV, has several advantages over challenged predecessors.
WayBlazer will license and leverage the natural language and cognitive search capabilities of IBM Watson, an artificial intelligence supercomputer system, which too
