Star Alliance Partners with ‘Plug and Play’ to Access Innovative Travel Startups

Star Alliance has entered into a partnership with “Plug and Play”, a startup accelerator and innovation center. Through the collaboration, Star Alliance will identify relevant startups and accompany them throughout their idea gathering and development processes, as new products and technology for the travel ecosystem are created.

Based in Silicon Valley, “Plug and Play” supports existing startups financially, provides guidance and mentorship as well as contacts to companies interested in their ideas. Regarding travel and hospitality, the mission of “Plug and Play” is to discover, support and scale disruptive technologies that are defining the future in this field.

“Partnering with Plug and Play is an important step in our strategy of becoming digitally advanced and delivering seamless travel experiences,” Star Alliance CEO Jeffrey Goh said in an announcement. “An early understanding of future technological and digital trends, coupled with the possibility to participate in the development at an initial stage, will ensure the long-term success of our new digital strategy,” he added.

“As Star Alliance transitions into its third decade, it is developing digital capabilities centrally, which can then be used by its member carriers to enhance their own products, with the aim of extending care to their regular customers even when they are travelling on other member carriers,” the announcement said.

“We look forward to helping Star Alliance transform their innovation roadmap. Through this partnership, we will introduce them to the best and brightest startups in the travel industry,” Saeed Amidi, founder and CEO of “Plug and Play” underlined.

“Plug and Play” invests in over 150 companies every year.  Since inception in 2006, it has created a network of of over 6,000 start-ups and 220 official corporate partners.