JetBlue announced July 1 that Amy Burr has been named president of the company’s wholly owned venture capital subsidiary, JetBlue Technology Ventures (JTV).

Burr has been with JetBlue since 2018 as JTV’s managing director of operations and partnerships, where she built an ecosystem of partners and deployment opportunities for the many technologies of JTV’s portfolio companies. She is also a Women Leading Travel & Hospitality advisory board member.

As head of JTV, Burr will shape the strategic venture investment direction of JetBlue and facilitate integration of successful startup programs into the airline’s overall corporate innovation initiatives.

Burr has been a leader in creating, sourcing and implementing innovative technology in the travel space for the last 21 years. As an original founder of Virgin America in 2004, she worked in areas including strategy, corporate program leadership, and commercial and revenue development. She ended her time with the company as the leader of the merger integration with Alaska Airlines.

Burr succeeds Bonny Simi, JTV’s founder and president from 2016-2020. Simi served JetBlue for 18 years in a variety of roles, including as a pilot, director, customer service, and vice president, talent. She joined JTV portfolio company Joby Aviation in December 2020 as head of people and operations, and remains an advisor to the JTV team.

“Amy and I have been working very closely in preparation for this transition, and I’m proud to see her officially step into this role,” said Simi. “She’s well-positioned to lead the team during its next phase, and I’m excited to continue to support her successes as an advisor.”

Check out an interview featuring Burr and Simi here.

Transparent Joins JetBlue Technology Ventures’ Portfolio of Travel Tech Startups

JetBlue Technology Ventures announced on July 2 its investment in Transparent, the vacation rental market intelligence company, bringing the company’s total funding to $2.8 million to date. The investment will allow Transparent to continue to expand its commercial team. 

The financing aligns with JTV’s investment theme of “reimagining the accommodation experience” and extends to support the subsidiary’s broader goal of positioning JetBlue with startup-led innovation. In recent years the airline has expanded to become a full-fledged travel brand.

Transparent builds and maintains a platform that aggregates data on vacation rental market conditions, including prices, occupancy and competition. The startup was founded in 2016 by travel entrepreneurs Pierre Becerril, Nil Sanz and Drew Patterson with the mission of helping property managers, real estate investors, online travel agencies and tourism boards make informed decisions within the vacation rental space. Since then, Transparent has aggregated millions of anonymized reservations and indexed more than 36 million listings globally to help thousands of users make sense of the rental industry. 

“Given JetBlue’s interest in offering short-term rental options to its customers and the travel industry’s recent demand volatility, accurate data is imperative to making sound business decisions. Our investment in Transparent not only provides us with valuable insight in the short-term rental market, but also a partnership with one of the leading startups in the vacation rentals space,” said Ryan Chou, investment associate at JetBlue Technology Ventures. 

Transparent estimates that the rental industry will generate $75 billion in gross booking value in 2021. The company has built the authoritative intelligence platform for the industry’s market participants, allowing them to analyze forward-looking rates and occupancy, understand demand drivers, monitor competitors, and analyze travelers’ origins and patterns. Clients and partners include Amadeus, Booking.com, Four Seasons, Marriott, Hopper, the Hawaii Tourism Board, the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, and hundreds of other institutions globally.

“One in every three beds available to travelers in the U.S. are hosted in a vacation rental as opposed to a traditional hotel,” said Becerril, Transparent’s co-founder and CEO. “As travelers’ appetite for this type of accommodation grows, there’s a need for business intelligence tools to help market participants make informed decisions on pricing, investment and strategy. During COVID-19, 25 percent of bookings occurred in short-term rentals, accelerating a long-term shift toward this form of accommodation. JTV’s interest in our company is a reaffirmation of the vacation rental industry having moved out of the shadow of the hotel sector to emerge as a major player in the travel and hospitality ecosystem in its own right.” 

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