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Two Dutch travel technology companies,
Tiqets and Bidroom, have been awarded for tourism industry innovation
at the Uzakrota Travel Summit, Istanbul, 13 December.

Bidroom, an online hotel booking community for frequent travellers, picked up the award for Top Foreign Travel Startup of the Year 2019. Fellow Dutch company Tiqets, which sells instant tickets for museums and attractions, scooped Top Foreign Travel Scaleup of the year 2019.

Over 4000 people attended the 2019 Uzakrota Travel Summit, which brought together travel agencies, tourism tech firms, hotels, agencies serving the tourism industry and bloggers.

Both winning Dutch companies are also partners that cross-promote each other’s services as they share an audience of frequent travelers who look for guaranteed best hotel prices (Bidroom) and last-minute mobile ticket booking (Tiqets).

Bidroom, which positions itself as a fair-play ‘Robin Hood’ of the online hotel booking industry,  has now won 15 first-place awards since its foundation in 2014.

“I’d like to dedicate this award to all our far-sighted Bidroom hotel members and frequent travellers,” said Bidroom CEO and Co-Founder, Michael Ros. “They believe in an efficient, user-friendly yet equitable approach to room booking, all without the burden of commissions.”

Since its foundation in 2014, Tiqets’ mission has been to make culture more accessible to tourists by making it easy to book museums and attractions. The company’s Co-Founder and CEO, Luuc Elzinga, says Tiqets now works with 2300+ attractions around the world providing instant ticket delivery to its users’ mobile phones. In October 2019, Tiqets received $60 million in Seed C financing led by Airbnb.

“Tiqets is proud to be at the forefront of the ‘experiential’ revolution that is transforming the travel industry and bringing more people more frequently into the greatest venues around the world” said Elzinga upon receiving the award in Istanbul.

The Uzakrota travel summit judges acknowledged Tiqets’ ability to rapidly grow over the last five years. Tiqets now employs over 200 people in 13 cities around the world.

Bidroom expects to have 100 employees by year end 2020, with offices in Amsterdam, Krakow, Istanbul and Paris.