Messe Berlin to support winner with a high-profile display at ITB Berlin 2011
Berlin, 21 June 2010 – On 17 June 2010 at the Sprungbrett 2010 awards, part of the VIR Online Innovation Days, the winner in the “Best Start-up” category was komoot, a newly founded company from Berlin. During the event at the Marshall Haus on the Berlin Exhibition Grounds Internet Reisevertrieb e.V. (VIR) and a panel of 50 leading members of the travel industry praised the innovativeness and user-friendliness of the new iPhone application.
komoot offers navigation products for outdoor sports enthusiasts who wish to plan their leisure time and explore new tours. By entering relevant information such as altitude and weather parameters users can put together individual tours and send the data directly to a mobile phone. When planning a route komoot takes users’ personal requirements into account. This app makes it possible to document one’s own training programme and share experiences and suggested tours with friends.
“This prize gives us an outstanding opportunity and makes us very proud. With this award we will be able to attract new customers and gain new support for our start-up“, said Markus Hallermann, managing director of komoot. “We look forward to our company being able to take part in ITB Berlin 2011.“
Messe Berlin donated the first prize to the award winners. komoot can choose between holding a press conference at ITB Berlin 2011 or a complete trade fair stand. Furthermore the winners received a 5,000 euro cheque from co-sponsor HRS.
“The wealth of entries representing creative and innovative products and services submitted to Sprungbrett at the VIR Awards showed us once again that the German online travel industry can compete with leading international players“, said David Ruetz, Senior Manger, ITB Berlin. “ITB Berlin is an ideal platform for up-and-coming enterprises in the travel industry, which gives komoot a perfect opportunity to present their services to trade visitors and a wider audience.“
Customer Alliance, who have developed a fully integrated evaluation system for the hotel industry, were awarded second prize in the “Best Start-up“ category. Hotel managers can feed customer reviews directly into their websites, boosting attention to in-house booking channels and optimising quality management.
mobile melting occupied third place. This company has designed software which internet users can employ to develop, publish and sell local information for mobile phones. Examples are GPS-directed city tours which automatically call up appropriate content, talking books which play at the relevant sites in question, and city tours to a background of music or poetry.
In the “Best Established“ category the hotel portal HRS beat off the competition with its mobile service called ”Hotels Now!“. The technology this service uses finds available hotel rooms in the immediate vicinity and displays them in real time as an HRS bed symbol in a video on a user’s mobile phone, where they can then be booked directly. Second spot in this category was taken by myobis, a company from Munich whose online booking engine makes it easy to market vouchers, tickets and service packages and additional tour services and enables real time booking. Third place went to German Transfer with its “business shuttle solution” which lets users book all their business transfers through a central Web 2.0 application.
