Phocuswright has tracked the launch of more than 80 travel-focused accelerators, incubators, early-stage investors and entrepreneur support programs in the last 5-7 years, not to mention dozens of pitch competitions, hackathons and conferences, including our own. Each promises to connect travel startups with a combination of industry expertise, resources, capital and exposure, and contributes to what is now a robust travel startup support ecosystem. These programs and entities have sprung from intermediaries, suppliers, destinations, investors and independent groups.

Virtually everyone on the planet who has used the internet recognizes the three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Bing. Along with the big 3, there are several others, such as the Chinese search engine Baidu and DuckDuckGo, which does not track and record users’ actions. Despite these advances, we have just begun to unlock the potential of search.

Transportation and travel. Travel and transportation. For obvious reasons, the two cannot be treated as mutually exclusive. Both are being transformed by ever-hastening technological advances, and though the naysayers dismiss the likelihood of total disruption, one has only to look at other technological leapfrog moments: the Ford Model T, Southwest Airlines, Apple’s iPhone, Uber. In each of these instances, mass adoption occurred because of a disruptor, and once that disruptor entered the market, adoption took place in fewer than 10 years. History is about to repeat, and it will once again involve how people get around. Many predict this change will be the most transformative one in transportation for the next 100 years. This analysis will explore various aspects and implications of this transformation on the travel industry.