Skyscanner to help incubate winning entrepreneurial ideas

Skyscanner has launched a competition calling on developers to build a game-changing new travel tech product using its APIs.

The Build with Skyscanner competition offers the best new travel product the chance to be coached by founder and CEO Gareth Williams, spend a week based in Skyscanner’s Edinburgh HQ, as well as bag a £1000 cash prize to kick-start their new business.

Skyscanner is looking for product ideas that have the potential to truly disrupt the travel industry, giving entrants four months to come up with and build their new site or app.

The competition offers the winning team the chance to receive one-on-one coaching time with Williams. After starting Skyscanner from a spreadsheet back in 2003, the business has grown to become a world leading travel search engine, attracting over 50 million monthly visitors, with 10 offices worldwide and over 770 staff.

The winning entrepreneur will spend the week in Skyscanner’s office HQ in Edinburgh, where they’ll also receive coaching from a team of engineers, product managers and growth strategists to help their new business take flight.

Skyscanner has already partnered with a number of promising start-ups that have had success using the APIs. LuckyTrip, which powers its flight search using Skyscanner’s Browse API was named as ones of iTunes ‘Top Apps for 2015’, while US-based app Hitlist, which powers its price alerts via the Skyscanner API, has had 400,000 downloads of its app.