New trends, great sessions, networking… The Business Travel Show Europe 2022 has come to an end, and companies (like us, TROOP) have had the opportunity to meet many people in person. Besides, during the show, TROOP’s co-CEO and co-Founder, Dennis Vilovic, was interviewed by Elisabeth West, editor-in-chief of BTN TV. They both talked about the evolution of TROOP, CO2 emissions, as well as future trends in the sector. Do you want to know more? Keep reading!
Five years ago “we won the disrupt award” at the Business Travel Show, in 2018, “and that's where we saw like, wow, maybe there is some value in what we're actually doing”, explains Dennis.
When talking about TROOP’s trajectory, the co CEO has it clear. “When we started in 2018, we won the innovation award. We had a very small booth, just presenting a concept, an idea. I would say applying common sense to how people should plan meetings, and that was very well received”, he remembers. “We built the first connections to buyers at that show and then in 2019 we signed the first fortune 500 companies as paying customers, which was quite interesting if you think about it. For these large corporations it's very difficult to engage with early-stage startups because they need products which are fully developed. We tripled the business in 2020, tripled the business in 2021, raised the investment around 2021… So far we have doubled the business this year. We grew from six people (last year, when we announced the investment round) to currently 35, and we are adding another 18 to 20 people currently, so we are growing further.”
Regarding the profiles that TROOP is looking for, Dennis replies that “the focus of the investment round has always been product. The product has to be amazing, and our investment has always gone into development: engineers, product people, etc. We are hiring on the sales side now as well.”
As Elisabeth West confirmed, “meetings are definitely coming back”. And when asked about if there are trends shaping up as we go towards the back half of the year, the co-founder answered that “we see trends in the type of meetings people are planning. Before the pandemic kind of our sweet spot was between 30 to 300 people, and now, after the pandemic, it's somewhere around five to thirty people.”
“There are remarkably more internal meetings happening right now, and more frequently, and personal assistants have to deal with this continuously. That's where they realized that they needed help, because for us, planning a five-person meeting takes a week, and on our platform it takes minutes. That’s one of the trends we see.”, explained Dennis.
On the other hand, he also highlighted another one. "There is a trend around sustainability. It's really a massive task and a massive pain point for a lot of companies. They all have these sustainability goals; everyone tries to reduce their emissions and people don't have the tools.”
Another point that was discussed during the interview was the relationship that TROOP currently has with Thrust Carbon. “It's really the detail of the data. So far we have fed detailed data on the transport, so the system gives you all the flight options, and then is able to calculate the emissions. Thrust Carbon has a way more detailed data set which is very interesting. This is really a big value for our customers.”
Regarding how people can and should reduce their CO2 emissions and carbon offsetting, Dennis added that “when you are part of a meeting and you see the emission state at the point of booking, it just makes you feel bad because you cannot now decide that you’re not traveling to New York or to London. We believe that the way going forward is avoidance, which means that by having the data from the planning piece you are able to massively avoid really big numbers of CO2 emissions. That's how everyone should look at planning meetings, and that can be on CO2, cost of travel, time, everything.”
The co-founder of TROOP also commented that they are bringing into the current version of the platform the information about the difference in terms of CO2 emissions, time or costs between what it would mean to travel by train, plane, etc.
When asked about how clients' policies are changing in terms of sustainability, Dennis confirmed that they’ve seen some elements around the choice of travel such as “don't consider a flight option for a distance which is short, like 200 miles or 20 kilometers.”
And all clients are asking for sustainability; “I remember in 2019 that sustainability was quite an important thing in Europe and in California, but not in the rest of the US or the rest of the world. Today everyone asks about that and they are very keen around that. That's what we see as well as seems to be one of the main interests when we talk to companies who do not yet use our tool. That's one of the key drivers they are interested in.”
If you want to check the interview, check the video here