Solutionz is helping redefine the future of travel technology by combining innovation, personalization, and purpose-driven growth. Founded by Chicke Fitzgerald, who literally wrote the book on Global Travel Distribution, the company draws on more than four decades of travel and travel technology expertise. Fitzgerald entered the travel industry in 1978 and travel technology in 1982. Over her career, she worked with industry leaders including Sabre, Travelport, and SITA before launching her own consulting company in 1996, becoming known for helping companies rethink growth, innovation, and customer engagement.
Her career has spanned the industry’s evolution from legacy Global Distribution Systems to today’s digital and AI-driven platforms, giving her firsthand experience across the full chain of how travel demand is created, captured, and monetized.
Today, Solutionz positions itself as a “Growth Multiplier,” an emerging SaaS category focused on helping companies create more value from the audiences and relationships they already have. The company’s SMARTtools platform helps brands improve personalization, connect travelers to precise destinations and experiences, and strengthen customer engagement without losing the human side of travel.
Purpose is also central to the company’s mission. Through its TravelingToGive™ initiatives, Solutionz directs portions of revenue toward charitable causes supporting nonprofits, veterans, and anti-human trafficking efforts—reflecting Fitzgerald’s belief that business growth and social impact are stronger when combined.
With 179 years of combined travel technology experience across its leadership team, Solutionz brings a seasoned perspective to conversations around AI, personalization, and the future of the industry. Fitzgerald believes travel companies must apply AI thoughtfully, especially as many brands struggle to maintain authentic customer relationships and trust in an increasingly automated world.
“Travel Tech creates an opportunity to collaborate with innovators who are shaping the future of the industry,” said Fitzgerald. “I’m especially excited about the conversations around AI, personalization, and building technologies that strengthen both business growth and human connection.”
Guided by the belief that “giving is not what we do, but who we are,” and that companies that “give more, make more,” Solutionz is helping shape a more connected, innovative, and purpose-driven future for travel technology.
Transforming Sustainable Hotel Program Management
Hotels invest millions in sustainability initiatives every year but without a clear way to communicate those efforts to travelers and travel buyers, that investment often goes unrecognized. Alō Index was created to bridge that gap, giving hotels the visibility they’ve earned and giving enterprises and business travelers the reliable, consistent data they need to make informed decisions.
Founded in 2022 by Anna Feinberg and Leanne Turner, Alō Index is a B2B platform that scores hotels on sustainability performance across three pillars: People, Planet, and Policy. The Alō Score gives enterprise travel buyers a standardized way to evaluate and compare hotels on sustainability, while giving hotels a clear picture of where they stand and where to improve.
Hotels complete a comprehensive assessment covering approximately 170 data points across 12 sustainability categories, using zero-party data reported directly by each property. This ensures transparency and accuracy at the individual hotel level, not chain-level estimates or third-party proxies. The resulting scores are integrated into corporate travel programs, where they inform hotel sourcing, booking preferences, and traveler-facing tools. In turn, hotels get a turnkey asset to use as a sales tool: a reusable, portable custom link and QR code that packages their verified sustainability data into a shareable profile. Properties can drop it into any RFP response, client presentation, or QBR: turning a single assessment into a sales asset that keeps delivering ROI every time a buyer asks about sustainability credentials.
Alō Index is already embedded in the hotel procurement process for major enterprise travel programs, with thousands of hotels scored across the world’s largest hospitality brands. For corporate buyers, the platform bridges the gap between sustainability commitments and the data needed to act on them. For hotels, it creates a direct line between sustainability performance and business outcomes.
“It can be hard to predict where a connection might lead, but building that foundation and growing your network by talking to other founders who are going through the same thing is always valuable,” said Leanne Turner, Co-Founder and COO of Alō Index. “Travel Tech has allowed me to meet people outside my usual circles, which is rare in the travel industry.”
By turning hotel-level sustainability data into actionable scores that drive real procurement decisions, Alō Index is helping move the hospitality industry from intention to impact.
Hotel cancellations and attrition don’t just impact the hospitality industry—they ripple through airlines, rideshare services, restaurants, and local economies, contributing to an estimated $200 billion in economic losses each year. Former hotel executive Teresa Guastella founded RoomRite to help solve that problem by transforming unused inventory into opportunity.
RoomRite is a B2B platform that connects hotels and hospitality professionals to either buy or sell hotel room inventory. By creating a smarter, more flexible way to manage supply and demand, RoomRite helps reduce cancellations, minimize revenue loss, offers a dashboard with important data, helps hotels with more ancillary opportunities, new business leads, and keeping more rooms filled.
“There are a lot of start-up communities — but travel is different,” said Teresa Guastella, Founder and CEO of RoomRite. “Through Travel Tech’s Advocate Member Program, it’s refreshing to be in the room and sit at the table with people who truly understand the industry and where it’s headed. That’s where the creative conversations happen.”
Mobi.AI has positioned itself as a trailblazer, leveraging AI to redefine travel technology.
Anna Jaffe, CEO of Mobi, founded the company over a decade ago to help people solve the most pressing issues of our time. She is particularly interested in the intersection between technology and humanity—and how technology can increase our empathy, sensitivity, and decision-making capabilities. Anna’s passion for exploring how AI can shape the future for the better is defining how Mobi impacts the world. She calls their technology Human Collaborative AI.
Mobi’s collaborative AI platform consists of a collection of advanced AI tools that help their B2B partners in travel, tourism, and hospitality deliver transformational customer experiences that drive engagement, loyalty and revenue. Their solutions recently received the People’s Choice Award as a part of Phocuswright’s Innovation: Launch at the 2024 Phocuswright Conference.
“With travel, everyone understands it because everyone does it,” said Anna Jaffe, CEO of Mobi. “Mobi has a thoughtful opinion on AI and we have a wealth of knowledge and understanding on that technology that we are excited to bring to the table in the travel tech community.”
Data-driven innovation is transforming the travel industry, and Snowflake is at the forefront of making enterprise data management and AI easy, connected, and trusted.
Snowflake’s fully managed platform connects businesses globally, enabling them to turn data and AI into powerful applications and solutions. In the travel and hospitality sector, companies use Snowflake’s unified data platform to enhance guest experiences through advanced analytics, deploying sophisticated tools like large language models (LLMs) and machine learning applications that deliver personalized experiences at scale.
“Our AI Data Cloud helps travel companies create seamless, personalized journeys by unlocking the full potential of their data,” explains Whitnee Hawthorne, Snowflake’s Global Head of Travel and Hospitality.
“While travel touches everyone’s lives, the industry hasn’t kept pace with technological innovation in other sectors,” Hawthorne notes. “As an Advocate member of Travel Tech, Snowflake is committed to fostering the next wave of travel innovation and helping shape the future of the industry.”
Entrusting properties to unknown guests was a fact of life for most property owners. Until DreamGuest gamified guest behavior.
Jason Scism, co-founder of DreamGuest, began thinking about these concerns following an unsettling camping trip on the Oregon coast combined with his daily living experiences at a golf and ski resort during the post-COVID boom. It became clear to Jason that, while most guests are courteous and pleasant to be around, there are some guests who need encouragement to be better and some bad apples who should be excluded from staying at properties until they get their act together.
Jason realized a critical tool was needed to support short and long-term lodging hosts of all types: the ability to learn more about their potential guests and incentivize and reward good behavior.
DreamGuest is a first-of-its-kind program that allows hosts to screen, incentivize, and reward considerate guests. By providing tools and opportunities for property owners to prevent disruptive individuals from staying at their homes and other facilities, DreamGuest serves as a safeguard empowering hosts to make informed decisions and reward good behavior. This not only protects the owners of properties but also the communities in which they serve.
“Throughout my career in Washington, DC, I’ve witnessed the power of trade associations to bring together diverse interests to achieve common goals. Now that I’ve dived headfirst into the travel tech community with DreamGuest, I was eager to join the Travel Technology Association to start working with my peers to combine smart policies with new and innovative travel solutions.”
At its core DCX Travel & Technology (DCX) is about making business travel easy, convenient, and fun.
Frustrated by the large corporate travel platforms’ lack of innovation and flexibility to solve individual customer needs, Lisa Simpkins founded DCX to be a different type of travel agency and technology platform. Lisa wanted to meet business travelers where they were, allowing them to book flights directly from airline platforms and then leverage the power of DCX to streamline, manage, and maximize their trip. DCX is a traveler-centric platform that offers transparency and customization, using the latest technology. By leveraging technology, including AI, DCX is building a more efficient, affordable and enjoyable travel experience.
UCPlaces was born out of a need to streamline the touring experience. Uri Sperling, Founder and CEO, spent years traveling the world and dealing with the burdens of navigating the tour guide experience – it was expensive, it wasn’t customizable and tour times were often at the whims of the tour guide company.
Launched in 2020, UCPlaces was originally designed for tour guides to create and sell GPS-guided tours. In the years since starting his operation, Sperling has worked with tourism and service industry companies like hotels and airlines to craft tours all over the world. Users participate in the tour through their phones, which results in a fully customizable experience that focuses on the user journey. Using UCPlaces, travelers can take tours in almost any language, on their schedule and at their pace. “UCPlaces is not only a service provider,” Sperling said, “but a community builder where people can create, share and sell experiences, these experiences are what inspire travelers to go places to begin with.”
“We’re still a small company,” Uri noted. “We feel that we are spearheading new technology in the industry, but with the exponential growth of travelers taking these guided tours on our platform, we believe that in just a few years, almost every traveler with a smartphone will be using their phone to take guided tours and we’re excited to have the influence and might of Travel Tech in our corner.”
Have you ever tried to shepherd a high school marching band from South Dakota to Orlando, Florida? Kory Vrieze, a Director with Group Travel Odyssey (GTO) has firsthand experiences in just that. Having begun his career in public education, Kory quickly recognized the value of travel in the development of young minds. He believes it’s an opportunity every student should be afforded.
Unfortunately, group travel can be cumbersome, complicated, and chaotic. GTO applies technology to mitigate the chaos and streamline the group travel experience. By consolidating all aspects of group travel from marketing and accounting to tour operations and on-the-road management into one convenient, easy-to-use package, GTO puts all your trip information at your fingertips.
“It may sound corny but I’ve seen enough of the world to know that the U.S. gets a lot of things right – not everything,” said Kory. “I’m excited to add my and GTO’s voice to Travel Tech’s efforts in Washington, DC. It’s critical that our industry educates lawmakers on the immense power technology holds to open up the world of travel to everyone.”
Travel Tech Innovator Profile: Group Travel Odyssey
Wednesday, May 13, 2026 — The Travel Tech Association is launching the Travel Tech Angel Investor Network Brief — a monthly publication connecting investors with the founders behind Travel Tech’s Start-Up Member companies and the innovations they are bringing to the future of travel. The Brief is built around a simple belief: in early-stage investing, […]
