And The Travel Innovation Summit Finalists Are . . .

I didn’t mention it, but as I watched all 32 presenters at the Travel Innovation Summit yesterday, I had to vote on each one. Why? Well, they decided to make a contest out of this. From the original thirty two, six were chosen to present on “Center Stage” at the actual PhoCusWright conference. One will be chosen as the “Best in Show.” Today, those six finalists were announced.

Home&Abroad’s Fogglight
I wrote about these guys yesterday morning, so you can go see what they’re all about. It’s a good idea in that it brings travel suppliers additional monetization opportunities beyond their core business with very low effort.

Wandrian
Having attempted to book a train ticket myself on the French rail site as well as on Amtrak within the last year, I know the pain of booking train travel online. These guys are trying to clean up the mess and create a better way for train companies to conduct e-commerce. Great idea.

TripIt
This is another one I wrote about yesterday. I do like the site, and it wasn’t a surprise to see it picked for the final round.
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Yapta
The idea behind Yapta was originally that they would track flights you’d already purchased, and they’d let you know if the price went down so you could claim the difference. Well, that never worked for me when I tried it, but now they’ve expanded on to other areas. You can now pick a flight you want to take and they will alert you if frequent flier seats come available.

Interactive Mobile @dvertising’s iM@
Pronounced “I’m at,” these guys really need to work on their name and their disdain for capitalization. I mean, even a Google search can’t find them, at least not quickly. But their idea is to create destination specific materials for travelers that will, of course, have an advertising component. And yes, it’s for the mobile phone.

Triporati
This was apparently the winner of the many trip planners that were presented yesterday. Triporati are supposed to be like the “glitterati” of travelers. They’ll get the best of the best content and then you can go to the site and create a customized trip plan. I’ll need to play with this more to see how I like it.

So that is that. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on a more mainstream company like TripIt or Yapta to win. But I think I’d actually go with Wandrian. In terms of potential business impact on the industry, I think Wandrian has great potential. That doesn’t mean the others here aren’t strong contenders, but I had to pick someone . . .