Seatfrog - upgraded travel made easy
by Startacus Admin
Seatfrog are aiming to make upgraded travel a painless, even pleasurable process, with their app that allows users to bid in an auction for an upgraded seat.
Sometimes, we like a bit of luxury when we travel. Sometimes, we only decide this after we’ve booked our seat in economy class next to the livestock. Unfortunately, not 
everyone we travel with is as accommodating to our whims as we would like, and the process of upgrading is not always a simple or inexpensive one.
With offices in London, Tokyo, and Sydney, Seatfrog is a startup that wants to make the process of upgrading at the last minute a painless, even pleasurable and fun one. The core function of the Seatfrog app is to allow users to bid in an auction for an upgraded seat.
The fewer people using Seatfrog on your plane, train, or automobile, the more likely you are to get into a luxury leather seat next to the businesspeople for a steal. In turn, this will increase word of mouth and bring more users to the app, wanting to get an upgrade for a pittance. And then the auction begins in earnest!
Similar to eBay, there is an option to ‘Upgrade Now’ without bidding, for a set price. If disaster should befall you and someone else outbids you for a seat, the app will notify you by push notification of another upgrade. This will be a straight sell rather than another auction, but it means you can pretend it wasn’t you who lost the auction because £16 was just too rich for your blood.
Seatfrog says that the scale of the opportunity in air and rail is huge. They say that, annually, more than 37 million premium seats are empty across the top 30 airlines. Across the top seven European rail providers, it’s 480 million. That’s a lot of bidding.
Seatfrog is currently live with only London North Eastern Railway - previously Virgin - but with 5 or 6 more partners coming soon. It is a simple, useful app that we think, with their recent £4.5m Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures, will get a lot of mileage.
If you like the sound of this travel tech startup, you might want to read up on:
- Early-stage startup CityRadar aims to track and increase tourism consumer spend
- Sherpr - The travel startup that's making shipping sports equipment a doddle
-
TravaPlan wants to make business travel management a one-stop pursuit
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would like to receive our startup themed newsletter, full of the latest startup opportunities, events, news, stories, tips and advice, then sign up here.
Starting a business can be a lot of hard work, so here's a few ways to avoid burnout and find a healthy work life balance.
At one-day event Ideation NI Thon, students will get the chance to solve global and local sustainability, environmental, city and health problems.
NI startup ESTHER, a peer-2-peer giving platform allowing charitable donors to give money directly to people living in poverty, head to New York for a 4-day fact finding mission.
The lowdown on how an Australian startup generated global sales for their innovative product, "weighted blankets"...
At 82% the UK takes 4th place in the list of countries being most ready for automation and robotics, whilst 30% of UK population’s jobs are at risk of automation.
The innovative game, eQuoo that helps users build their emotional fitness and thereby help fight their mental illness
The London-based femtech startup that is using AI and genetic testing to provide a tailored oral contraception service for women
Recent research by Starling bank shows that in 2019, women earned up to £12,319 less per year than their male colleagues of the same age and within the same industry
Brandtech group, You & Mr Jones, has invested in ethical video startup Good-Loop who have closed a US $1.6m seed funding round.
2019 saw celebrities contribute to start-up investments in record numbers, surpassing a previous spike in 2015.
Published on: 26th August 2018
.png)
If you would like to enable commenting via your Startacus account, please enable Disqus functionality in your Account Settings.
- Ideation NI Thon at NI Science Festival sets out to solve global issues 17th Jan 2020 At one-day event Ideation NI Thon, students will get the chance to solve global and local sustainability, environmental, city and health problems.
- NI startup ESTHER takes flight to New York 16th Jan 2020 NI startup ESTHER, a peer-2-peer giving platform allowing charitable donors to give money directly to people living in poverty, head to New York for a 4-day fact finding mission.
- 2019 stats show that the gender pay gap continues 14th Jan 2020 Recent research by Starling bank shows that in 2019, women earned up to £12,319 less per year than their male colleagues of the same age and within the same industry
- Digital DNA Awards 2020 nominations now open 13th Jan 2020 The Digital DNA Awards, held in partnership with MCS Group, celebrate the best tech talent, from companies of all sizes, excelling in the world of Digital and Tech and not just in NI...
