Travel Tech Startup Accelerators Learn From Early Missteps and Adjust Course
Photo Credit: Some of the entrepreneurs who participated in Hangar 51, a travel tech startup accelerator run by International Airlines Group and LMarks. Hangar 51
Skift Take
More than a dozen travel startup incubators and accelerators, backed by some of travel's best-known companies, have popped up in the past few years. The early word, which is hardly surprising, is that picking startup winners and helping them sign deals isn't just plug-and-play.
There has been a spate of travel companies launching programs to help travel technology startups get a leg up. One of the messages they try to impart to entrepreneurs is the need to both act and learn from mistakes quickly.
"Launching too slowly has probably killed a hundred times more startups than launching too fast," as was noted in 2006 by Paul Graham, the force behind YCombinator, the most famous of startup mentorship programs.
But the incubators and accelerators themselves need to learn from their own mistakes, too, and adjust course. Otherwise, they won't be able to compete to get the most-likely-to-succeed entrepreneurs applying for their programs.
In 2014, there were three travel-specific incubators and accelerators globally. Since then, enough travel tech incubators and accelerators have opened that there is a lively competition among them to see whose model works best.
These programs — the pioneers and the newcomers — include Airbus's BizLab, Amadeus Next, Bo
