Acai y Nowadays se imponen en los Innovation Faceoff 2026 de Business Travel Show Europe
The first day of the Business Travel Show Europe 2026, held at Excel London, served to recognize some of the most innovative technological solutions in the business travel sector. Acai and Nowadays took home the top awards at the Business Travel Show Europe Innovation Faceoff 2026, a competition that brings together startups and tech companies with solutions designed to address the key challenges faced by corporate travel and meeting buyers
Nine companies participated in this edition, presenting their innovations to a panel of experts and event attendees. The entries ranged from artificial intelligence platforms for travel agencies to tools for meeting management, sustainability, and predictive analytics for purchasing airline tickets.
The Business Travel Innovator 2026 award went to Acai, an AI-based platform that automates operations for travel agencies and TMCs. The company had previously been recognized in 2025 with the Trailblazer Award from the TravelTech Show, an event held in conjunction with the Business Travel Show Europe.
Ron Glickman, Acai?s head of sales, noted that the recognition received last yearsignificantly boosted the company?s growth and stated that this new award confirms the impact its technology is having on the industry.
For its part, Nowadays won the People?s Choice 2026 award, granted by public vote. The company develops an artificial intelligence platform to automate the search for and booking of venues, negotiations with vendors, and the comprehensive management of corporate meetings and events.
Its solution is based on its own database of more than 400,000 venues worldwide and, according to the company, saves morethan 135 hours of work per meeting, in addition to helping control unmanaged spending and generating savings of between 20% and 30% on event bookings.
The company continues to expand its international track record after winning both the jury prize and the public prizeBusiness Travel Show APAC 2026 and the Business Travel Show America 2025. Its CEO and co-founder, Anna Sun, explained that Europe is a strategic market for the company?s growthand noted that this recognition demonstrates the growing acceptance of a native artificial intelligence approach applied to the organization of meetings and events.
The jury for this edition consisted of Andy Hoskins, editor-in-chief of The Beat; Keesup Choe, CEO of PredictX and winner of the 2025 competition; Benjamin Park, Executive Director of Travel & Sustainability at Parexel International; and Carine Morin, Regional Travel Manager for EMEA at ServiceNow.
Nine Finalists
In addition to Acai and Nowadays, the finals brought together seven other companies with innovative proposals for the business travel and corporate events market.
Among them were Direct Travel, with its travel content platform Avenir; Groupize, which specializes in managing meetings, events, and group travel using artificial intelligence; Kayak for Business, aimed at simplifying the planning and booking of corporate travel; SeatCash, with its predictive intelligence platform for purchasing airline tickets, FareX.ai; ThrustCarbon, focused on facilitating the selection of travel options with a lower carbon footprint; TravelCode, an AI-powered corporate travel management platform for medium-sized companies; and Versa, which automates the reconciliation of travel expenses and receipts using AI.