Gas is cheap these days. Really cheap. And that tends to mean that a lot of us will be hitting the road for the holidays. Last year, when gas costs around $2.85 a gallon, a whopping 46 million of us hopped into the car for Thanksgiving.
As fun as a road trip is, there are always some headaches associated with travel. Here are 5 Colorado tech companies that are working hard to make your travel easier, cheaper and less stressful this holiday season. Whether you chose to hop in a car or a private plane this holiday season, these tech companies are here to help.
Pana is an on-demand personal travel assistant that lives in your phone. You can message them while you’re traveling, and they’ll act like the concierge at a fancy hotel. You can, for example, tell Pana that you're hungry for Mexican food, and they will set you up with reservations. The coolest part of the service is that it is largely powered by machines, and you'll never know if you're talking to a computer or a human.
No matter how much you love each other, there is nothing worse than sharing a hotel room with a family of four. Except, perhaps, booking a home rental that turns out to be a dud. InvitedHome takes the best of both options and combines them. They take home vacation rentals (think Airbnb and HomeAway), and professionally manage the properties like they were a hotel. From a consumer's perspective, it means you get to stay in a vacation rental, but are guaranteed hotel-level consistency and quality.
Life's pretty good for Colorado's tech community, and this app is trying to spread the love. The brainchild of a Colorado-based ex-Whole Foods marketing exec, this app makes it easy to give back. All you have to do is shop like you normally would. Scan your receipt through the app, and the merchant will donate some of the proceeds of the sale to a charity of your choice. It's simple, it's oddly fun, and it just might help you sleep at night.
Want to do something new for the holidays? Maybe take the family to learn how to rock climb, or have a professional guide take you fly fishing? Utivity is a platform that connects professionals of all sorts, to people who want to learn a new skill. They have people on their platform that will teach you ski, grow cannabis, fence or practice yoga. You name it, and there's probably someone out there who will teach you it.
Commercial air travel is for peasants, and your family is royalty. FreshJets brings private jet travel from the 1 percent crowd down to the, well, roughly 2 percent crowd. The service sells unused return legs on charter jets to everyday people. So, if Warren Buffet charters a flight from Omaha to Denver, you can get a deal on the plane's return flight. It's still nowhere near as cheap as a Frontier flight, but then again, can you put a price on avoiding flying Frontier?
Travel safe and travel someplace amazing Colorado!
