Interview with Marina Berezovska – Founder of Travel Tech Con

Travel Tech Con is this week in San Francisco (and we’ll be there!). Here’s an interview with founder Marina Berezovska.

Not in San Francisco? Follow #TTC18 and @TravelTechCon from 7-9 June to watch the event!

Travel Massive San Francisco member Marina Berezovska is the founder of Travel Tech Con – the only independent technology conference for travel startups and engineers. We spoke to Marina about what drove her to start Travel Tech Con.

How did you get into the travel industry? What got you hooked?

Initially, same as for the majority travel tech folks I know, it was the love for travel. Later on when you dive deeper into the industry and the history of its evolution – it’s the pace of innovation that keeps me personally frustrated.

Being able to build a strong ecosystem of travel tech innovators and enable startups to lead the way into the future of travel industry is the best reward I could ever hope for when starting Travel Tech Con.

What motivated you to create Travel Tech Con? What problem are you solving?

From the outside… the travel industry looks quite progressive – travelers constantly discover new services and apps, we all hear about chatbots and hotel robots, self-driving vehicles, connected devices, subscription-based flights, crypto payments and “on-demand everything”.

From the inside… while all of the above is definitely happening and is on the rise, the industry is still missing a critical piece needed for enabling faster movement forward – open innovation.

Currently, the industry is still operating under “closed curtains” with access to data being controlled and maintained by a few players from the last century (literally), with several monopolies fiercely protecting their profit channels, with significant developments happening via handshakes behind closed doors. This, for example, is not a productive environment for a startup to come in and build a significantly better product with open access to resources and a healthy and fair competition.

Travel Tech Con in this scenario is the enabler, the educator and the facilitator for startups to lead open, unbiased, agenda-free, founder-t0-founder technology discussions and open collaboration projects.

Name a few success stories or recent highlights from the Travel Tech Con community?

Even though I’m biased I think one of the greatest examples is Winding Tree – an open source travel distribution platform on Blockchain, the inception of which you can track to our first Travel Tech Con where we discussed open data standards in the travel industry.

Later on it’s been amazing to watch many of the team members and advisors joining the effort via meeting each other at one of our travel tech meetups and events.

What are the emerging topics you’re excited to hear about at this year’s Travel Tech Con?

I’m personally very interested in learning more about Smart Cities & next generation services on Blockchain, Future of Urban & Air Mobility and travel tech trends to watch.

What destinations outside the US do you admire for travel innovation? Where are the hotspots?

The travel tech scene in Israel is very strong and has been on the rise in the last 5 years – it’s really exciting to watch more and more travel startups coming from Israel ecosystem.

I’m sure we’ll see a much faster pace of innovation coming from Asia rather than the traditional West.

Asia of course has a lot of its particularities when it comes to innovation, but in many areas including AI, Blockchain, Transportation, Regulations & Security, Passenger Services.

Join Travel Massive at Travel Tech Con

Travel Tech Con – the only independent technology conference for travel startups and engineers is taking place in San Francisco on June 7-9, 2018.

 Follow Marina on Travel Massive to connect with her and learn more about Travel Tech Con .