Where are the travel industry's most successful money men investing in 2008?

The Innovation Initiative – the Travel Industry’s “Dragons Den” was launched today to help budding travel industry entrepreneurs showcase their products to our select board of industry experts, venture capitalists and angel investors and potentially source funding.

You need to get involved to find out:

·            Where are the travel industry's most successful money men investing in 2008?

·            What new travel products will soon be tempting your customers - what are today's travel entrepreneurs creating?

The format is simple: the hottest new travel industry start-ups from around the world will show and demo their products over a two day period at EyeforTavel's Travel Distribution Summit this May 20-21 2008 at the Business Design Centre in London. And they don't pay a penny to do this. They will be selected to participate based on merit alone. In fact, we're even offering £7,000 of media exposure, so that the winners, no matter how small, will become known by the industry. The winners will be selected by EyeforTravel's prestigious advisory board and by a select board of VCs which includes:
·    Dick Porter, Co-founder & Director, STA Travel
Dick started STA Travel in the seventies and grew it into a US$1.2 Billion organization employing 2600 people in over 90 countries. Now on the STA Travel board he devotes his time to finding and funding start ups that could replicate such a massive growth.

·            Hugo Burge, Founder, Howzat Media
Whilst building Cheapflights into an international flight comparison site, Hugo founded Howzat Media investment fund. Investments include WAYN.com, Zoomf.com, TrustedPlaces.com

·            Jason Katz, Founder, KP Capital
UBS's youngest Managing Director, now runs his own private equity fund devoted to investments in the global leisure sector. Jason was involved in the Hilton and Thomas Cook transactions as well as selling lastminute.com to Sabre and Active Hotels to Priceline.

·            Gerry Samuels, CEO, Travel Capital
Gerry co-founded Gradient Solutions that was acquired by Sabre. Travel Capital invests in companies, with funding requirements ranging from MBO/MBI down to early stage funding. The investment capital is sourced principally from Travel Capital's Founders, and from anetwork of partners within the institutional private equity world.

·            John Kent, CEO, youtravel.com
John has been a serial entrepreneur and has managed to build value both as an executive and as an entrepreneur. John founded youtravel.com in February 2006 and the business is expected to reach a turnover of €70m in its first year of operations. Previous positions include lastminute.com UK MD, travelbargains.com CEO and Medhotels.com

Entrepreneurs are applying now (simply email your "pitch" to tim@eyefortravel.com with "ENTRPRENEUR" in the subject line.) The chosen 20 will do a preliminary pitch on the 21st of May. The winning 4 will pitch again at the travel Distribution Summit keynotes in order to receive feedback and possibly investment from the VC panel. The panel will then choose a winner. (The winner and Eyefortravel will negotiate a £7K B2B marketing package to help the winner gain further exposure.)

There will be the following categories:

Start-ups

·            Travel intermediaries - bed banks, agencies, tour operators

·            Travel technology and marketing - Travel meta search, reservations systems, affiliates

·            Travel suppliers - hotels, airlines, car hire, cruise

·            Anything else! - things that the industry needs which don't fit the categories above

Next round of funding

·            Travel intermediaries - bed banks, agencies, tour operators

·            Travel technology and marketing - Travel meta search, reservations systems, affiliates

·            Travel suppliers - hotels, airlines, car hire, cruise

·            Anything else! - things that the industry needs which don't fit the categories above

Get involved NOW!

Simply email your "pitch" to tim@eyefortravel.com with "ENTRPRENEUR" in the subject line

If you want to attend or sponsor contact:

Tim Gunstone
MD, Eyefortravel Ltd.
tim@eyefortravel.com
0207 3757557