Travel Studios

          Our agile team is devoted to identifying, testing and launching promising new travel concepts. We are focused on social planning tools and more specifically, technologies that support these three areas for consumer social travel planning.  Our new products contain features such as mobile applications, occasion based recommendations and Reputable advice. We provide innovative approaches to business challenges in the travel industry and support these efforts through new product development, enhancing existing products and maintaining technical leadership. The technical scope includes wireless, semantic web, and rich media applications to name a few. We drive innovative technology applications that create new revenue opportunities or improve profitability for customers.

Our team of industry and discipline experts have a combined 150+ years of experience, speak over a dozen languages including signing, can write in over 30 technical languages, boast a multi-patent holder.  Many in our group are sought-after speakers and writers, award winning technologists, and award winning marketers.

John Samuel - Senior Vice President

John Samuel is a travel industry veteran and consultant, well-known for his innovative programs using the web to market and deliver superior travel shopping experiences for consumers.

Prior to joining Travel Studios, Samuel spent 2 years at Orbitz, where Samuel held the position of Executive Vice President and was responsible for all aspects of marketing and leisure travel offerings, ensuring that the travel site continued its industry-leading role in offering the easiest to use and most consumer-friendly web site.  He also led the company's e-commerce and distribution efforts by building stronger relationships with travel suppliers.  Through his leadership, Travel Studios is now leading technology and business innovation for Sabre and its customers. 

Prior to joining Orbitz, Samuel spent 16 years with American Airlines, where he served as vice president of Customer Technology, maintaining overall responsibility for the airline's web site.  He also managed the team responsible for development and operation of all of American's customer-facing technology.  During his tenure in this position he directed the expansion of self-service airport kiosks and rollout of the voice recognition platform for customer service.

Samuel also held the position of vice president of Interactive Marketing where he oversaw the complete redesign of the American's web site with a new look-and-feel, technical platform and enhanced functionality to successfully improve customer satisfaction and expansion of email product suite of services.   During this period, he also launched an expansion of American's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities. 

Denise Angarola Fernandez - Marketing Vice President and Maven

Denise is our Marketing Maven, with a wealth of marketing know-how.  She is currently developing the overall marketing plan/mix for Travel Studios' new offerings like "cubeless".   Before Travel Studios, she was the founding partner of Julden Group, an award winning and fully integrated marketing firm specializing in brand and campaign marketing for wireless, entertainment and interactive programs. Prior to her own gig, she spent 13 years in wireless management but then traded phones for love and turned her talents to two of the leading online dating firms in the US. Yeah, makes for really cool water cooler chats.

Denise also is the Founder of NetworkTies, a networking and talent development community that teaches people how to network, build a personal brand, and create personal publicity to enhance career opportunities within or outside their current environment.

Toby Cunningham - Business Strategy Vice President

Toby leads online business concept ideation and incubation for Travel Studios.  Prior to Travel Studios, he was a Director of Marketing for Sabre Holdings where he was directly responsible for the development of a new luxury airline concept as well as management of strategic marketing initiatives across business units of the company.  And he just loves it when a plan comes together.

Toby has had multiple leadership positions while at Sabre, including founding Sabre's business development practice, as well as co-founding its technology outsourcing business.   He has also held various management positions in Marketing and Finance, including managing product launches and strategic analysis for Sabre Travel Network and Travelocity.  He also has international sales and business experience, representing Sabre in multiple international contract negotiations and sales engagements.

An active community supporter, he is an Associate Board Member for the Dallas Museum of Art, and holds a leadership position with the YMCA's Adventure Guides program. In his leisure time he enjoys travel, outdoor recreation and firing weapons while smoking a cigar.

Tony Brice, CTC - Director of Emerging Technologies

For most of his 30 years in the travel industry, Tony focused on identifying and leveraging synergies between emerging technology and new business opportunities.  In his current position as Director of Emerging Technologies with Travel Studios, Tony has used the dark arts to conduct research on trends in technology, business, and human behavior for the purpose of applying emerging technology-based solutions.  His current focus is on the convergence of travel retailing, search, advertising, gaming, and media technology as they relate to travel and hospitality.  He led the concept and prototype development for several key components of Sabre Holdings' technology portfolio including Inventory/Availability/Revenue Management, Dynamic Pricing, and Rules-based Merchandising.  He currently has eight patents or patents pending in those areas as well as new methods for Data Management, Revenue Optimization, and Dynamic Packaging.

Brice joined Sabre's travel agency back-office systems group in 1983.  He worked as a Senior Systems Analyst in Product Development prior to becoming Manager of New Technology Research and Development.  He has also served as a Senior Product Manager in Travel Management Systems and Sabre Computer Services.  Prior to Travel Studios and his "Overlord" status, Brice spent two years as Director of Strategic Architecture focused on executing Sabre's move to Open Systems and Service Oriented Architecture.

His diverse interests include music, movies, travel, thoroughbred racing, and sports.

Travel Studios Business Model to create and capture value

We will break down our Business Model into it comprising segments, Value proposition, Market Segmentation, Value chain structure, Revenue generation, and Competitive Strategy

Value proposition: 

Not long ago, employees in the office would congregate in hallways and around water coolers to discuss current projects, share information they had recently acquired, ask and answer business questions and, yes, even socialize a little.  Today, many organizations face a workforce that is highly dispersed, working from a variety of remote locations, on the road, or telecommuting.  Although beneficial for a number of reasons, the dispersed workforce has made it more difficult to collaborate, aggregate and dispense critical business knowledge, and keep a real-time pulse on the operations of the business.

Additionally, as globalization continues to flatten the world, innovation has never been more important.  But the belief of how best to achieve higher echelons of innovation is changing.  At one time, innovation was viewed as the equivalent of invention, a very singular process, one person with the great idea and, by force of will, creating something original.  But innovation is not merely creating something new, but new and fulfilling an important customer need.  This additional requirement means that it is difficult to innovate in the singular form, innovation is plural.  It requires connections among various knowledge workers for it feeds from the diversity of thought.   

The solution?  Find a way for organization employees to once again engage each other in a single location in order to provide the collective abilities of all employees to help answer the questions of each employee.  That's where Travel Studio's product "cubeless" comes in.

What is cubeless? Simply stated, for organizations with a dispersed employee base who needs greater interconnectivity and higher levels of innovation, cubeless is the Enterprise 2.0 online community platform that operates within corporate firewalls and taps into the collective intelligence of your workforce. The system harnesses the untapped skills and knowledge of employees more quickly and efficiently, bringing together the right people and developing new information, answers, and resources to resolve business challenges.

At the core of cubeless is a powerful, proprietary relevance engine that ensures that questions being asked by employees are proactively delivered directly to those in the organization who are most likely to have the answers.  The more questions and answers provided, the smarter the system gets at matching the right people with the right situations.  In addition, an easy-to-use browsing tool and a full-feature search engine allow users to find exactly what and who they require when they need those resources most. 

The benefits of cubeless are as limitless as the ways it can be used.  At the highest level, cubeless:

• Captures, stores, and makes available intellectual property: Allows for many to share in a single knowledge base, and all to access that knowledge in real time.
• Reduce communication lag time: Allows for many employees to quickly answer questions and build on each other's thoughts.
• Drive collaboration across organization: Allows for the skill sets and expertise of all employees to be searched.
• Drives innovation: Allows for many to contribute, post and act on new concepts
• Creates a stronger organization culture: Allows for inclusion, internal networking and diverse personalities to shine.  It adds faces and back stories to the names and titles.
• Minimize new hire ramp time: Allows for shared knowledge to benefit new employees beyond new hire training and as continuing education throughout a career.
• Minimizes the knowledge loss from departing employees, including the knowledge of who-knows-what and an understanding of the finer nuances of the workplace
• It is a high level explicit and implicit data aggregator helping you determine what subject matter is popular, relevant, and who has a reputation for expertise, all within the confines of your organization's firewall.

Market Segment:

Companies targeted that the product is best positioned for are those that are large, decentralized, and have very strong core competency. For instance, a company that has engineers (usually large companies need engineering-level technical intelligence) dealing with similar technology issues (strong core competency) dispersed everywhere across the US (decentralized) would get the most value out of Travel Studios' products like cubeless.  

Value Chain Structure

Travel Studios products general value for the customers primarily by reduction of costs from quicker resolution and use of less resource for problem resolution.  However, the product can also generate revenue.  For instance, products like cubeless can shorten the time for new product introduction.  Below is a list of ways cubeless will capture value:

• Quick resolution of issues by utilizing community benefits
• Heightened levels of new product development by developing networks based on innovation
• Develop value to management as a "looking glass" to the heart of the firm to assist with sound decision making
• Talent/Leadership identification and development by tracking employee's qualitative and quantitative content within the community

Revenue Chain and Structure:

Revenue is generated via subscription of the product by outside firms.  The cost structure is virtually all fixed, with some variable cost coming via tech and community support.  Target profit margins will be in flux with the level of time/use of the product per customer.  

Competitive Strategy:

The core of our strategy is the ability to manage and manipulate complex data and to present relevant and usable information while in a highly secure environment is the DNA of Travel Studios with its historical tie with Sabre Holdings, and we have utilized this core competency and success to ensure that the information collected by the cubeless system is easily translated into action and results.

Additionally, we are further differentiated from our competition from our cost leadership with a penetration price structure and the experience of our management as mentioned in the "Management bios" section.

The core of our strategy is the ability to manage and manipulate complex data and to present relevant and usable information while in a highly secure environment is the DNA of Travel Studios with its historical tie with Sabre Holdings, and we have utilized this core competency and success to ensure that the information collected by the cubeless system is easily translated into action and results.