TravelinAI, a next-generation business travel booking platform, came away as the first-ever winner of the inaugural run of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA)’s VentureConnect initiative in the Asia Pacific.

The announcement was made yesterday,13th May, on the second day of the GBTA APAC Conference 2026 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Singapore.

Founder Roy Golden said of the platform: “Our vision is to create an experience which will truly reflect on how people live and work and travel.” 

Prior to this most recent victory, TravelinAI was named among the top four global innovators by the German Business Travel Association and the platform was named the Most Disruptive Travel technology at the most recent World Travel Market.

Golden added: “We've also been very fortunate to be handpicked by Sabre to launch globally.”

GBTA’s VentureConnect seeks to bring together promising travel tech startups with potential investors, travel buyers, and corporate leaders, thus creating opportunities for meaningful feedback, collaboration, and growth throughout the business travel sector.  

Three primary benefits

Golden likewise pointed out that TravelinAI accords three potential benefits to corporate travel managers.

As he explained: “One is to save time, so travel management companies can now launch customers within minutes instead of several weeks or several months.”

End-users can actually use the platform even without prior training, enabling them to book trips with just three clicks.

The second outcome is control through real-time spend dashboards, budget setting, approval processes and travel policies with built-in DTF care and a flexible architecture which can be customised for the specific requirements of each end-user.

The third end is a split-payment technology that allows employees to combine their business and leisure trips in a single booking flow.

According to Golden: “Through our split payment system, we can identify and separate all the expenses between business and leisure for flights and hotels.”

Opening doors to disruptive thinking for better business travel

Prior to the announcement, Golden joined seven other travel tech firms / startups in pitching their innovations to conference participants.

Each firm was given 90 seconds to present their ideas and the concepts ranged from pilgrimage tech for Indonesia’s massive hajj and umrah markets to a comprehensive banking app specifically developed for business travellers.

Aside from the winning innovator, the inaugural roster of disruptive technologies for GBTA APAC included the following:

• TruTrip, a comprehensive travel booking engine featuring an intelligent decision layer and local-first infrastructure;
• Tripper Travel, a solution for in-sector fragmentation that features SofiaAI, an AI-native travel assistant;
• Orcar, a mobile application that takes the stress out of car rentals and booking flights and hotels;
• Zenia by Zenmer, an agentic AI for the post-OBT era;
• Travogpay, a comprehensive expense card for business travel;
• BuzzAI’s pilgrimage platform which powers travel arrangements and payments, specifically for the Indonesian market; and
• Zentrum Booking Agent which has just one API that hand handle over 100 suppliers and can go live in as early as 15 days.