Media · Fact Sheet
A technology company that helps people travel better, using automation and AI to make sense of loyalty and rewards programs and to handle passenger rights when flights are delayed or cancelled.
Legal name: Unravel Travel Marketing Inc.
Named one of ten national finalists for a $100,000 fintech grant, with a live pitch in Montreal in July against early-stage companies from across Canada. The festival awards up to $1 million in prizes across categories.
The product blends AI with humans in the loop. A free SMS flight tool lets a traveller text a flight number and get live status and a read on their rights, with no app and no signup. The more ambitious work is still being built: reading cancellation odds in real time, calling the airline on a traveller's behalf, waiting on hold and transcribing the conversation, then helping assemble the evidence needed to claim what they are owed.
The pitch is a chance to test the idea against the country's strongest early-stage companies and bring momentum back to the Island. Winning the grant would help fund the company's first hire, an early step toward building a technology team in the region.
Founder Saleem Barnard grew up in Qualicum Beach and runs the company on Second Avenue West, the same street where his father once ran a travel agency. He sees a small, engaged community as a strength, not a constraint.
Barnard's focus on accessibility goes back to his first job out of high school, teaching 200 local seniors to use the internet through a library program. Qualicum Beach is one of Canada's most senior communities, which makes it an ideal proving ground. Every feature has to work for an older traveller before it ships.
Saleem Barnard spent more than two decades building products and leading growth marketing at fast-growing technology companies before returning to the Island. A 2000 graduate of Kwalikum Secondary School's (KSS) IT career preparation program, he received the school's Jack Bell Memorial Citizenship Award.