Travlr ID Aims to Become ‘Telecom’ of Traveler Data

Traveler identity network Travlr ID earned top honors at this year’s Business Travel Show’s Innovation Faceoff, and for founder and creator Gee Mann, it was not his first foray into the travel industry.

A mechanical engineer by trade, Mann left the oil and gas industry to launch a meetings and events booking platform. That led to another start-up, Kiva Solutions, which had a “very savvy platform system” with an API that let venues accept instant online bookings for events. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic hit shortly after that launch, and that was the “nail in the coffin,” he said. That was followed by a venture into the area of self-sovereign identity and blockchain and building an AI company focusing on providing a question and service, and Travlr ID was the culmination of all those experiences, he said.

“The problem didn’t come to me,” Mann said. “I’ve been on that journey with all the different sectors in the industry,” he said.

Mann spoke recently with BTN executive editor Michael B. Baker about Travlr ID’s roadmap and how profile ownership can benefit corporate travel programs and their travelers. An edited transcript follows.

BTN: What are the key challenges you’re aiming to solve?

Gee Mann: We’re using technology to build a trust framework for the industry. We’re building the rails for people to talk. We’re like the telecom provider. We want to be that technology-enabled trust. We’re [also] trying to promote an inclusive identity. Today, my profile is very basic in nature. I have a few medical things, and I don’t intend to share them with all the suppliers in the world, but if it could serve me better if I did share it, it would go a long way for me as an inclusive identity.

If I had to pick the No. 1 thing, portability is very high up there. My profile is not portable across organizations, products or even tools. Then you get into the other things. There’s interoperability. It’s great that it’s portable, but it doesn’t sing to everybody else’s tune, so how do you make it work with other systems? Then there’s standardization. No one can dictate a standard to what a profile is saying. A profile is a feature in everybody else’s product. We’re trying to make it into our product, so that’s a different mindset. We’re saying, take this out of your product stack and let this be a product that talks to your profile systems. For a [travel management company], we’re fixing a single source of truth, accurate and in real-time; for a corporate, it’s control and having it in their domain.

BTN: Where do you fit in the ecosystem? Who is the customer?

Mann: Today, we fit with the corporate and the traveler today while powering TMC partners. That is our absolute focus, and I don’t think we’re going to change from that. The idea is to let them manage their profiles and their relationships, and the amount they share with their partners. 

This is the journey that brought me in. [Online travel agencies] hold all the shopping data, and all the hotel gets is [a user name], and you turn up for your meeting at the hotel. What happened to everything I filled out on Booking.com? We don’t want to be in the situation where we’re shifting more power to the wrong place in the ecosystem. Once we own our identity and profile, can the airline come to me as opposed to me going to the airline?

BTN: You’ve referred to Travlr ID as a “permission network.” What do you mean by that?

Mann: Everyone who comes into the ecosystem has to be verified, which means you only have permission to be part of this network as a traveler or an organization, which could be the corporate or an agency or TMC. It is not a public chain, and not anyone can just walk straight into this network and have access to data.

BTN: What issues in the travel industry will that be able to solve?

Mann: First and foremost, you have everything in one place. It’s not to say that through automation they aren’t already managing their profiles well today. We’re saying, a central dashboard will let you control all these relationships. Change management becomes a hell of a lot better when the profile is in your control. We are very strong on ESG, so we have an approach where we are going to make sure we are integrating with third-party CO2 emissions in the dashboard, so now I’ll have wallets that give me metadata around the carbon footprint for travel. Centralizing things like that, a central place for you to manage your profiles and seeing the meta-profile around wallets is only going to enhance a travel program. You also can allow cross-border and cross-industry collaboration, because the corporate can have more free relationships. We are not in the business of disruption. We are an enabler.

BTN: What is the incentive for suppliers to participate, since they are potentially giving up their own ownership of traveler data?

Mann: One of the things people realize is that today, we are a network that will allow one-to-one relationships. Today, we have our own Travlr ID wallet that allows these relationships to happen, but tomorrow anyone can enter the market and join the network with their wallet. Google can join the network, or Apple Pay—it doesn’t matter who the wallet is. We eventually want to be out of the business of wallets and be more of an infrastructure for managing those relationships. You are now able to use your wallet across that network. For example, if you stayed at the Marriott 100 times and are Ambassador [status] at Marriott, but you are staying at a Hyatt for the first time, there’s nothing to say Hyatt can’t be given insights—I can’t give them the data or tell them about your information, because you’re not granting that permission—but I can say you have stayed 100 days at a Marriott. Hyatt may want to, from a loyalty perspective, give you a better rate or follow your preferences, and make sure they care for you in a better way. We can give insights to allow the supplier to give you a better service. Insights are not data. Those are going to be extremely valuable for suppliers when it comes out. Supporting you as a traveler is going to become better, because you know more about them and the persona you’ve been carrying around. 

BTN: What is your development roadmap?

Mann: There’s no doubt that we are going to shift to the next layer of AI. Me being in the AI business for four years, I have a lot of understanding of what’s going to be important. All these plug-ins people are talking about, are you really going to pour your personal information in these plug-ins and let them share where they want to share that information? Not really. 

What I really would love, I own my data but I want recommendations not based on my personal data but me as a travel persona. Would we be able to do AI recommendations to upsell and cross-sell? Absolutely, but what about risk alerts? I’m on a journey, and my taxi has not made it, so I’m not making my flight, so I’m not making it to Amsterdam. Can there be a proactive approach to supporting me as a traveler? AI has a big part, but it’s AI and blockchain together that allows for privacy and AI to be able to deliver me a service. These AI assistants are going to do that, but how can you play with them nicely while maintaining your privacy? That’s the next battleground for us, once we have the network up and running.

BTN: We see the typical behavior is for people just to opt in and click “yes” whenever they are faced with a privacy prompt. How do we change that?

Mann: People opt in for convenience. Now, we’re saying don’t share your data for the opposite. That’s an interesting challenge because that’s the problem with Web3. The user experience needs to come along a little bit. You’re talking about opting out, which means I get less convenience, and that’s its own sort of conundrum. The idea is to make that as simple as possible from onboarding from a corporate. Once you have a wallet, it should be seamless for you to be joining another organization. The best way for me to describe is, Here’s an email, here’s a link, join this organization. It should be as simple as a few clicks, and you are now into a new organization. 

BTN: Where do you think we are in the industry as far as education on this?

Mann: [In conversations at the Business Travel Show,] I was stunned at the amount of people were really aware and educated about self-sovereign identity. People are requiring less education from people like me who like to talk technology jargon. I was surprised by how much people already knew.