Hilton working with travel startups – general considerations for founders

November 6th, 2017

by Alex Bainbridge

If you are a travel startup today and want to work with travel brands there are a constant flow of opportunities – pitches, competitions, grants, real world test programmes. It is almost a challenge to keep up as these opportunities become available all around the world.

One challenge as a founder is filtering who to apply to and then completing the application processes. Is this particular brand going to be worth the effort?

The considerations…

Time commitment

I would assume an investment of six hours at the very minimum and by the time you have attended a pitch face to face, probably double or treble that. This is normally high value founder time and not delegatable (even assuming the startup founder has a team to delegate to!).

Startups only have time to spend, not money, so founder time is the most valuable commodity a startup has and must be spent wisely.

Public pitching

Many of these pitches end up with public pitch rounds. While these make great educational evening events that everyone should go to, they are not so healthy for the founder. Yes success is ultimately all about execution not about the idea, but still, if you need a few months without people looking too closely at you, telling a room full of eager founders also looking for the next idea may not be the best strategy.

This is why startup pitching at conferences works – you tend to do that when your product or service is a little better prepared – and you have the beginnings of a defendable moat.

Do I want to be married to a single brand or do I want to be playing the whole market?

One challenge of working for a big travel brand as a startup (and it really is working for) is that it can exclude you from being attractive to that brand’s competitors. This may also be a contractual obligation.

This can limit your opportunities. Yes you get one great brand to work with, but you may lose ten……. but this is ten you never had…..

There is no correct answer here – you have to make your own judgements on your own opportunities – but one to think about very carefully.

Will the brand move fast enough if you win?

I know stories of startups winning travel brand pitch competitions and although getting a good test project and a commitment to work together over the longer term (success yes?), it just takes too long to be useful to a startup and the business may have run out of money by then.

Some better programmes are very specific about timelines which can help address this issue.

Well executed example: Hilton

It is refreshing to hear a travel brand, Hilton, really pitch to attract startups for their current campaign. You can sense they realise that applying takes effort and they want the best to apply. If you are interested, they are looking to find a partner to work with them on topics that include in destination whole trip experiences….

 

 

 

You need to get on with applying as applications close on Wednesday 8th November 2017…..

Further details on the brief and how to apply

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