5 Travel Startups Building Platforms to Connect Brands With Consumers

The mobile traveler seemingly has unlimited options for how they connect and communicate with travel brands.

Newer tours and attractions are often more adept at the mobile and digital universe than smaller, family owned brands that have been around for decades. Building-blocks to customer satisfaction, such as website user experience, reputation management, the right employees and balancing online and offline experiences continue to be the vital for how to bring customers back and how to encourage them to positively recommend a brand.

This week’s five startups connect brands with consumers and employees to better enable communication and the visitor experience.

BeatnPaths is a platform connecting global attractions with tours and activities businesses. It lets attractions upload real-time information about their business to booking platforms. BeatnPaths automatically creates packages based on geographical location, theme and date of the query. Tourists have the ability to pre-order and book their attraction tickets at discounted prices.

>>SkiftTake: So much discovery now happens in-destination so it’s important that attractions are able to update their current offerings and communicate with their audiences in real-time.

smArtapps helps cultural attractions such as museums build mobile apps.

>>SkiftTake: Many museums and attractions have come a long way toward making their experiences more interactive for visitors, but many are also still largely offline experiences that don’t align with travelers’ expectations.

TourismTiger helps tourism businesses design their websites.

>>SkiftTake: We support any platform that wants to improve the user experience on tours and attractions’ websites.

Travel Appeal is a reputation management platform for hoteliers, attractions and destination marketing organizations. Brands can manage their social media and reviews on a single platform that provides actionable insights on how to improve.

>>SkiftTake: Travelers have numerous channels through which they communicate with brands or let their opinions be known. Brands need a platform that accounts for all of these channels, not just a few.

Hocaboo is a talent recruitment mobile app for hoteliers. Job applicants can connect with employers and hotels, and can publish job offers for free and pay only for matching candidates.

>>SkiftTake: Hospitality is an industry where personality and personal touch matters. A mobile app applications process should help eliminate certain applicants based on each brand’s criteria, but the bulk of focus should always be on in-person interviewing.

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