Business Travel Show Announces Innovation Awards Finalists

Five groundbreaking business travel products have been short listed as finalists for the third Business Travel Show Innovation Award, the winner of which will be unveiled at the event at London’s Earls Court 2 on February 13.

This year, 19 nominations were received (see below for list) and this morning these were whittled down by the Award’s panel of well-respected business travel journalists and experts to a shortlist of five.

The five companies are:

·         Advantage Business Travel Management for its GDS CAT 35 initiative

·         EOS for its all-business class long haul service

·         ITM for Project Icarus

·         Portman Travel for the Portman Forest programme

·         Virgin Atlantic for its Premium Economy

“This year’s shortlist for the Business Travel Show Innovation Award was the best yet. The quality of the submissions – and the number of them – made for heated debate among the judging panel and it was a really tough job to choose the shortlist,” said Adam Coulter, judging panel chairman and editor of Travel Trade Gazette Business.

The Business Travel Show Innovation Award was founded in 2005 to recognise innovation, ingenuity and true leadership in the business travel industry. British Airways won the very first award for its Manage My Booking self-service strategy. In 2006, Harry Weeks Travel & Leisure Group was deemed the worthy winner for its online rail-booking tool Evolvi.

Visitors to the Business Travel Show can meet up with all of the original nominees included the short listed entries. These are as follows:

·         abtn.co.uk – introduction of personalised content (stand 447)

·         Advantage Business Travel Management - its CAT35 and deal with Amadeus (420)

·         Air Berlin – a low fare airline with a business service (325)

·         The Anvil Group – ETMS – the employee travel monitoring service (454)

·         The Apartment Service – flexible business service (453)

·         Brussels Airlines – b.flex and b.light (753)

·         Business Transport Resources – unique reverse auction facility (700)

·         Carey Worldwide Chauffeured Services – adoption of One water (724)

·         EOS Airlines – all business long haul service (613)

·         Etihad Airways – Diamond Zone (407)

·         Europcar – Business Travel Month+ (336)

·         FST Travel Manager – MIS (719)

·         Gelco Expense Management - CardLink (351)

·         HRS Hotel Reservation Service – addition of user generated content (637)

·         LateMeetings.com – advanced online meetings service (448)

·         Portman Travel – Portman Forest (550)

·         Radius – traveller tracking system (Business Lounge)

·         TravelRes – MIS