*GUEST BLOG* Anticipating Change: Effective Business Travel Management in an Age of Uncertainty

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is that in managing international travel, we need to expect the unexpected.  The shifting of political tides, increasingly common natural disasters and quickly implemented travel bans have certainly kept us on our toes.   

Immigration and travel have moved up the political agenda.  Protectionism in in vogue and politicians the world over are driving huge changes in policy which are impacting the way that business must manage their international travel.

In the United States we have seen significant restrictions on the Visa Waiver Program, including prohibitions by the Trump administration on an increasing number of nationalities.  In the United Kingdom, Brexit has created anxiety around the future ease of travel between Britain and the EU.  Most recently, politics have taken a backseat to public health in driving travel restrictions as we have witnessed hastily arranged travel bans implemented with the aim of curbing the spread of coronavirus.

So how do we stay ahead in this environment and ensure that we have a proactive policy approach designed to create effective crisis management strategies?  Through experiences over the past few year of this constantly changing landscape we have learned some crucial lessons.  Below are some measures that companies should take today to help to better prepare their business for this new, changing environment. 

Seek effective partnerships

Given the multitude of challenges in the industry today, companies seeking to remain agile and forward thinking are partnering with experts to help monitor and mitigate risk.  Embedding this expertise through strategic partnerships will help to save costs and create a more reassured travel population overall. 

Businesses should not write policy on the basis of media reporting.  As we have seen recently with reporting on Brexit, conflicting information in the media can cause greater confusion in difficult times.  Strategic partnerships will help guide you by providing advice that you can rely on to help you to achieve some stability when there is uncertainty.

Know your current policy and work toward further development

Understand what the policy is around business travel bookings and ensure that the policies in place are followed.  Your ability to determine the potential business impact of changes and to respond quickly is highly dependent on the quality of your policy.  If there is no central policy for booking travel and governance to ensure that the policy is being adhered to, individuals could be booking and expensing travel outside of the company policy which can complicate identifying those impacted when there is a change or crisis. 

Know your people and populations

At the most basic level, it is essential to know who your business travellers are.  This may seem like quite a simple task, but it can be challenging to track without good governance in a business travel policy.  Knowing your travellers also means knowing where they tend to travel to, what types of activities they generally conduct when travelling to these countries and what visas or work permits they hold. 

Know the pitfalls

Compliance with local immigration rules is crucial to effectively managing your business traveller population.  Running afoul of local immigration rules could cause unwanted exposure to the company, your employees and potentially even your clients.  One way to manage crisis is to avoid it in the first place with good policy around business traveller compliance.

Finally, it is important to be flexible and alert. In this modern world that we live in, it is impossible to plan for all eventualities.  We must remain educated on the landscape that we face, maintain excellent corporate policies with good governance and partner with providers that we trust.  These strategies will help us to prepare us as best as possible to face the next inevitable curves in the road ahead.

This blog was written by Jennifer Fackelman, Senior Manager with Fragomen LLP who will be exhibiting with Nomadic at the Business Travel Show on the 26^th and 27^th of February.  Come by Stand: B248 to meet the Nomadic team and attend a mini education session on Wednesday at 14:00.

Register for FREE www.businesstravelshow.com

Photography by Nandan Prabhu Photography

*GUEST BLOG* How Carbon Offsetting Can Work for Business Travellers

When work calls for employees to travel to places unreachable by the more carbon-friendly options of train, bus or car -- they fly. However, flights are a huge contributor to the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, a greenhouse gas that leads to global warming. Carbon offsetting of flights is becoming a popular way to understand emissions as travellers look to take action for a better future.

Several charities and programmes are working to reduce the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere through projects funded through donations. Now that it’s easy to generate carbon impact data through travel management platforms, travellers and their organisations can see their emissions in tonnes and donate the price equivalent to these programmes to help offset their carbon footprint.

Carbon offsetting programmes usually consist of two different kinds of projects: forestry or energy. Forestry projects stop trees (nature’s carbon solution) from being cut down or provide for the planting of new ones, and energy projects reduce fossil fuel consumption by investing in energy efficient products or renewable technology.

It’s important to remember that donations to these programmes do not instantly offset emissions. Understanding and utilising these environmental projects truly indicates the slow process of resolving our carbon impact - so offsetting can serve as a motivator to help change habits and decision making when it comes to travel.

Choosing Efficient Carbon Offset Programmes

Technology is being improved all the time and carbon impact data can now even live inside your corporate travel booking platform. With this data on hand, if employees do choose to harness that information for offsetting, it’s important to understand how to select efficient and reliable programmes.

Efficient programmes exist, just consider these three factors:

●        Additionality: Carbon offsets must be additive to those planned or expected from existing projects and initiatives.

●        No Leakage: The project can’t be increasing emissions somewhere else whilst it’s reducing them in others.

●        Permanent: A project where the output won’t be reversed in the future.

Why Enable Employees with Carbon Emissions Data?

Providing your employees with data on their individual carbon impact enables them to make environmentally-conscious decisions that can reduce your company’s emissions overall. It’s not hard to do with advancing travel management platforms providing carbon impact data now. Additionally, travelling sustainably is often more cost friendly and might positively impact your T&E spend as a by-product.

Providing employees with this information communicates a wider corporate social responsibility (CSR) message from the business, gaining buy-in and contributing positively from a company culture standpoint. It enables environmentally conscious employees to understand the impact of their business travel decisions and gives them an opportunity to turn that information into aid.

Learn how to make incremental changes that work towards a sustainable future and still harnesses the power of in-person communication with TripActions latest eBook - Taking Steps Towards Sustainable Business Travel. Link: https://tripactions.com/uk/ebook/sustainable-travel

Visit the team at Business Travel Show, stand B322. Register now www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* How travellers will use technology in 2020?

By Fiona Shanley, Chief Customer & Marketing Officer, Travelport 

If you’re a member of Generation X, as I am, you probably remember making phone calls from your hallway at home and only sending emails from the office. We read travel inspiration catalogues and reserved our trip on a Saturday morning trip to the local High Street. While it’s easy to take for granted the devices almost all of us now carry 24/7, the continued advancement of mobile connectivity in the last few years means more of us than ever are now being inspired, planning, booking and managing travel through our mobile phones.

With this in mind, we’re looking at the trends shaping mobile travel at the start of a new decade and the traveller behaviour that’s shaping how our industry works. Here are the findings of our recent research and the 9 things you need to know about consumer-facing travel technology as we start the 2020s.

Researching your trip

Peer to peer recommendations remain the most influential source of information for consumers. The same behaviour occurs in the travel industry with review sites (such as TripAdvisor) the ‘go-to’ research resource for over 80% of travellers.

We’re also using the capability of our mobile devices to find new ways to research travel options, including voice search, which will increasingly be available within your favourite travel apps through the next decade:

1. Voice search continues to gain traction as a research method with 40% of travellers using it, up from 23% in 2018.

2. Voice search is even more widely used by business travellers, with almost 60% using it in 2019.

Booking on mobile 

Booking travel is quite a fractured experience for the majority of travellers. Only 36% of respondents said they booked their whole trip through one website or mobile app. When you factor in research the number of touchpoints grows. A clear trend we are seeing is a willingness to book on mobile if the content is right for the traveller.

3. The vast majority of travellers (~75% of Leisure and ~80% of Business) have booked and paid for travel on their mobile.  

This trend is unlikely to change. Over the next 10 years, mobile will become increasingly prevalent as a travel booking method. Our research highlighted that the over 55s are the only age group not to have embraced booking on mobile. As the population gradually gets older the majority of travellers will be the digital natives of today (current 18-40-year olds) and more likely to continue their current behaviour of booking through their mobile

4. 84% of Gen Z and Gen Y respondents have booked and paid for a trip on mobile versus only 40% of the over 55s.

Communication creates connection 

As we’ve shown, lots of travellers are already booking online and through their mobiles. What their travel agencies do after a person has made a booking will be the key to building loyalty with that customer. Offering a discount or sending special offers is the minimum consumers expect from any retailer. Added information and relevant, timely customer service are likely to take that relationship a lot further. 

The biggest frustration travellers have is getting access to new information once their trip is booked. Our research shows many travellers are open to hearing about opportunities to enhance their travel experience through adding ancillaries like in-flight wi-fi or checking an extra bag after making their original booking.

5. 56% of travellers want to see the availability and cost of extras such as the ability to choose your seat, look at the menu, check if wi-fi is available and what the baggage allowance is  

Over 80% of travellers using apps said an update on the trip status is the most important notification they could receive. However, push notifications can play a role in the sales process too.

6. 82% of app users want to receive push notifications about changes to the price of a flight they had been considering and reminders about flights they had left abandoned in their cart.

This shows travel brands that travellers are always open to relevant communication while they’re planning their trips, before and after booking. 

Time to get personal 

We live in a world of big data. Our ability to understand huge data sets in order to gain insights about the people represented within them is growing thanks to AI and machine learning. Personalization as a trend will continue to grow in importance, whether it’s tailored offers or the ability to self-serve, travellers want more control over their trips.

7. 82% of respondents said they were in favour of receiving a shortlist of branded offers, being able to purchase add-ons, and to give airlines more access to your data to facilitate more personalization.

8. 35% of travellers said they get annoyed if companies they use regularly do not remember their preferences.

While a little over a third might not seem that significant, in an industry the size of ours that is a lot of people and these people are likely to be regular travellers. Think about a CFO who travels first class to regional offices every quarter, who likes to stay in the same suite in the office-adjacent hotel and prefers to drive themselves to and from the airport in 7-series BMW. This is a high value traveller and well worth remembering. If you can communicate with her before she comes to you and let her know these preferred services have been booked and confirmed, you make her PA’s life easier and her trip less stressful. 

App, app and away

As you may expect, younger travellers are more likely to use apps. The range of activities covers all aspects of the trip including flights, accommodation, car, and bleisure. Regardless of how the booking took place, approximately 40% of travellers want to be able to manage all aspects of their flight from an app.

9. 87% of travellers have the same or more travel apps on their smartphone in 2019, a 5% increase on the previous year.

The internet is becoming increasingly ‘mobile-first’. The amount of traffic from mobile has overtaken that from desktops in recent years and smartphone sales have been a multiple of PC sales for a long time. In the eyes of Google, how your websites look on mobile is more important than how it looks on a desktop.

A lot of the stats uncovered in our research back up the move to mobile by consumers and particularly travellers. Creating a digital travel experience through mobile communication should be a priority for travel agencies in 2020.

To find out more, download our Consumer Trends Report. You can also download our Mobile Trends Report 2020 and our Online Trends Report for even more information.

Visitors can reserve a meeting with the Travelport team or request an NDC demo at BTS here: https://marketing.cloud.travelport.com/bts-2020 

Register for FREE and visit the team on stand B1400 now www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* Mix people and platforms to build a high-performance travel programme

No matter how many objectives you’ve mapped out for business travel in 2020, you’ve only got one goal: to run a successful corporate programme. I’m here to tell you that four managed travel strategies will get you there, no matter what success looks like for your company and programme.

1.       Engage your travellers.

2.       Take good care of them.

3.       Let data drive your decisions.

4.       Create a scalable programme.

These four strategies require both great people and innovative technology. That’s not news to travel buyers. A recent survey by The Beat shows 87% of travel buyers value professional and responsive agents above all else. But digital capabilities aren’t far behind: 85% of travel buyers say getting accurate and timely programme data from their travel management company is critical.

At BCD Travel we’re constantly thinking about how best to configure the talents of our people and the ingenuity of our technology to meet corporate travel programmes changing needs. Those four strategies are at the heart of everything we do.

Engage your travellers

Traveller engagement is about balancing business objectives with traveller-friendly booking options and frictionless trip experiences. The aim is to gain travellers trust, inform their choices and, ultimately, increase traveller productivity while cutting programme costs.

Strong engagement tactics treat travellers like the consumers they are—reaching them with targeted merchandising and informative messages that show up at the right time. Engagement influences travellers booking and spending decisions, and it gets results. In just three months, our client Finastra, a U.K.-based financial technology firm, saved more than US$650,000 through traveller engagement.

Take care of your travellers

The coronavirus, Brexit and the wildfires in Australia all serve as timely reminders that we can’t eliminate hazards faced by business travellers. But we can mitigate them with a modern risk-management model.

On the people side, providing travellers with emergency numbers answered 24/7/365 is invaluable in building traveller confidence that you’ll take care of them. But you can’t just wait for that call. You must leverage digitalisation to locate and communicate with travellers in a crisis.

Domino’s harnesses the capabilities of BCD’s DecisionSource®, TripSource® and SolutionSource® platforms to increase the safety of employees, whether they're traveling for business or commuting to the office. A bonus: Duty of care improvements boosted booking compliance by 21 percentage points in one year.

Drive better programme performance with data

Any decisions you make for your programme should be backed by data. Period. That’s why we care so much about the quality of the data we collect and consolidate. It’s also why we make booked data available to our clients in just 30 minutes. That ensures your dashboards and reports are accurate and actionable in the moment.

RELX, a global information and analytics firm headquartered in London, relies on BCD to consolidate third-party data worldwide. Hear from RELX’s travel leader about how high-quality data enables insights and innovation.

Build a tailored programme with scalable platforms

Your business is unique. Your travel programme should be, too. What if you could create a programme tailored to your company culture and policies? One that offers:

·        The best travel content available, at the best rates, from multiple sources

·        A consumer-grade traveller experience driven by profile-based recommendations and service

·        Reporting and intelligence that allows you to make quick, informed decisions

A platform approach makes all of this possible by allowing you to integrate and distribute new technologies, content and suppliers with agility.

BCD is a full-service digital provider. Over the past five years, we have put 35% to 40% of our earnings back into the company to invest in our people, technology and infrastructure. That enables us to build flexible, open platforms primed for what’s next; partner on industry advancements; and meet clients’ changing needs without ever losing sight of what really matters: running a successful programme that keeps your travellers moving safely and smoothly so your business grows.

I’d love to talk about how your travel programme is adapting to change. Meet me at the Business Travel Show, 26-27 February, Booth B320. See you there! Register for a free visitor pass www.businesstravelshow.com

This blog was posted by Heather Wright, vice president of Global Product Marketing at BCD Travel.

*GUEST BLOG* Please Sir, I Want To Take A Business Trip

How the tedium of approval stresses travellers out – and inflates costs

People often have a romantic view of business travel – flying business class, five-star hotels, lobster dinners, piling up the points, cutting epic deals. And sure, it has its perks! But ask anyone who travels more than three or four times a year, and they’ll tell you it can be stressful too.

For many travellers, the stress begins long before they board the plane. Getting approvals, for example, can be a soul-cleaving experience.

Most companies demand employees seek approval before booking. And in theory, this makes sense. Companies don’t want employees booking trips willy-nilly, racking up costs.

But pre-trip approval processes have become so onerous that the booking experience is about as streamlined as a Lego bulldozer.

This applies across Asia. In India and China, travellers can require four or five levels of approval before booking. Even in Singapore, that beacon of efficiency, travellers may require two or three. So, they typically wait around three days – sometimes even a week – before booking.

As mortals wait, airfares rise.

In Asia, business trips are usually booked two to four weeks in advance. Waiting three days bumps airfares up four per cent on average. A week? Seven per cent.

Worse, if the fare goes up in the interim, it can be back to square one – the company’s travel policy might require the traveller to restart the entire approval process all over again.

You might ask: “Isn’t the ability to hold a booking one of the benefits of using a travel management company?”

And the answer is yes – but only for certain fares. It doesn’t apply to cheaper fares, which are ticketed instantly. Consider China, where approximately half of all airline seats are ticketed instantly, and these are around 30 per cent cheaper than the flexible seats.

It seems absurd to waste your travellers’ time – while costing the company money. Particularly since a whopping 98 per cent of trips are approved in the end. For domestic travel, approval rates are even higher.

What to do?

Start by identifying which trips require approval. Then set thresholds. For example, you can modify your policy to auto-approve any flights under US$500. And for flights over US$500, if fares increase only 10-12 per cent while you’re waiting for approval, you’re good to go.

Next, consider post-trip instead of pre-trip travel approval. Since almost all trips get approved anyway, just trust your employees to do the right thing. Deal with issues when they file their expenses after the trip.

And of course, use technology. Some apps send push notifications when a trip needs approval. This can cuts approval times massively. Technology can also auto-approve trips if the approver doesn’t approve them in time.

We’ve worked with our clients to find savings of up to five per cent. That might seem piffling, but when you’re spending US$5 million a year on flights – not uncommon for mid-to-large sized companies in Asia – that’s a quarter of a million dollars. Plus you have happier and more productive travellers. Result!

Blog Author: Akshay Kapoor, Senior Director, Multinational Sales, Asia Pacific, Carlson Wagonlit Travel. CWT are exhibiting at Business Travel Show, register for FREE now and visit the team on stand B230 www.businesstravelshow.com

*EXCLUSIVE Q&A* Business Travel Wellbeing Community

Business Travel Wellbeing Community was started by a group of like-minded people who wanted to change business travel for the better, and who felt that the best way to go about this was to focus on helping people with their mental health, physical health, jet-lag, sleep management, recovery, thriving and calm mind-sets and cultural intelligence. 

We find out more in this exclusive Q&A with co-founders of Business Travel Wellbeing Community; Dr. Lucy Rattrie, John Lee, Katie Virtue and Matthew Holman.

What inspired you to co-found BTWC?

We are business travellers, love working in the industry and are passionate about people doing incredible work. We have been frustrated that wellness challenges are not being addressed, despite statistics and anecdotal reports emphasising the importance of wellbeing. We want to enable people, organisations, and the industry to flourish, so collectively founded a global community with no hidden agenda and a values-based purpose.

Thankfully, traveller wellbeing is a topic gaining momentum, confirmed with a 2019 report revealing 89 % of organisations polled will increase their approach to wellbeing in 2020. We realised the people who matter (that’s the business travellers btw!) were not being asked what they want, need, think, so felt the need for something different, radical, right.

What excites you most about BTWBC?

Harnessing our collective energy to make a difference in the industry, speaking as a single voice that puts people at the heart of actions! A central point will bring together opinions, insights, knowledge to address challenges faced, guide people, organisations, suppliers, and professional bodies in decision making and action, bringing sustainability and putting people first.

What will make traveller wellbeing front and centre for the next ten years?

The increasing impact to travel programmes, high turnover, absenteeism, increasing fears around risk (amongst other factors) are causing travel managers and HR to take ownership. We expect the travel-HR conversations to become status-quo, driven by internal advocates, willingness to allocate budget and resources to help travellers, and suppliers who up their game. It’s been accepted for a long time that people are the heart of HR, and we feel people will soon be viewed as the heart of travel management – taking a balanced view and stopping a dominant default to savings, compliance, cost etc. We expect a change in travel policies to become more people-centric, with a degree of flexibility to enhance wellbeing.

Building a global community around wellbeing is a crucial first step, but ultimately, the leaders will make a difference and be recognised as first movers, courageous in taking a holistic business metric view.  Wellbeing is not an easy topic as the KPIs and business metrics to follow can be difficult to measure or take time to emerge.  They don't appear in any profit and loss account, but they do have a considerable business impact.  Losing a talented employee to anxiety, stress or burn-out can cause a ripple across an organisation beyond just their direct salary. Some are leading the way and we’re looking forward to seeing how things develop.

Business Travel Wellbeing Community are exhibiting at BTS wellness retreat. Register for FREE now www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* Flexible Mental Health Support - a Must for Business Travellers

There are few who would criticise moves towards ending the shame and secrecy surrounding mental health. The change in how we perceive and talk about mental health has come quickly. Even five years ago those unfamiliar with mental ill-health were to some extent sheltered from others’ reality. Now we can all readily absorb the newly shared private tortures of people experiencing depression, anxiety, self-harm or any other mental health issue or condition.

And as the extent to which mental health is affecting all of us becomes clear, so too has the need to address what is a growing and unmet demand for support.

Employers are no exception here. They bear a moral and legal responsibility for employees who are increasingly demanding support. Financially too there is reason to review existing provision: Deloitte and Mind estimate that poor mental health provision costs UK companies more than £43 billion annually.

For employers with staff who travel extensively, the picture becomes ever more complex. Not only do those employees need access to the same benefit package as their counterparts in the office, but they need a huge degree of flexibility and scope in the type of mental health support service they can access.

A recent survey by Capita showed that 33% of business travellers said that travelling to meetings has affected their sleep, with almost a quarter saying that their early start or late finish caused by travel has resulted in an argument with a partner. A significant 41% of respondents said they worked beyond their core hours when travelling for work.

A paper published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine looking at business travel and behavioural and mental health stated: “...business travel is...associated with jetlag, sleep disorders, stress and anxiety, increased alcohol consumption, exposure to high energy density ‘‘fast’’ foods, and long periods of sedentary behaviour.”

Our own survey found almost half of business travellers feel that their employer does not provide them with the right type of mental health support.

But what support does this cohort of workers need?

Interestingly, we also found that demand for online chat-based mental health support was twice as high amongst business travellers (41%) compared to office based workers. And one of the top reasons cited by business travellers as an important aspect of a mental health support service was out-of-hours availability.

So while we know that stigma is a significant barrier to getting help, there are practical reasons too why some people can’t or don’t get the support they need. The demand for a flexible support service which can work alongside travelling workers is clear.

According to Dr Lynne Green, Chief Clinical Director at Kooth Work, tractability is key: “Employees across the world are increasingly flexible and don’t all conform to the traditional nine to five pattern of work. Staff therefore need flexibility in terms of mental health and wellbeing support. They need something they can access whether at the airport at 9pm or sitting at their kitchen table with jetlag at three in the morning. Easy and early access to support is key for all of us.”

So while we welcome anti-stigma campaigns as critical in helping as many people as possible to get help, we know we must turn our attention to the support that is available when and if they decide to talk. For employers of business travellers, this means ensuring you have a flexible service which allows staff to use it on their terms. One that means they can get the help they need when they need it - wherever they might be.

Kooth Work are this year's Wellness Retreat sponsor. Register for FREE and visit them at the Wellness Retreat where they'll be presenting their recent findings on mental health in travel www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* 8 Mobile Trends You Must Know About For 2020

The only thing faster than the rate at which the months fly by is the pace of change in technology. Each year travel companies are adopting more advanced technological solutions to try and eke out some competitive gains.

It’s encouraging to see the travel industry being early adopters of initiatives like voice search and artificial intelligence technologies. Though their application is still in its infancy it will be exciting watching these initiatives evolve.

In this blog, we showcase our Mobile Travel Trends for 2020. I’ve compiled a summary of each trend from our eight experts. You can download the full report here.

1.        Super Apps

Did you ever reach for your smartphone to search, compare and book or buy something? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could perform all these tasks in one place?

This may be a relatively new concept to consumers in the west, but Asian mobile users have become accustomed to using a super app to manage lots of different types of tasks. Our own Niall Minihan, Senior Commercial Manager at Travelport, gave us the low down.

WeChat is the origin of the species and has evolved into a quasi-operating system. It pioneered the use of mini-programs (millions of them within the WeChat app). For many Chinese users, WeChat is the internet with 1 billion active users logging on every month.

For travel brands, delivering a frictionless experience from the beginning to the end of the traveler’s journey has always been the holy grail. The super app may just be the solution.

To get Niall’s full take on the impact of super apps, download the full Mobile Travel Trends 2020 report.

2.        View from the big TMCs: BCD Travel

Following on from our super app trend we looked around the industry to see if companies were looking to streamline the digital experience for travelers. We spoke to a leader in the TMC space, Will Pinnell, Vice President, Digital & Product Strategy, from BCD Travel. Will gave us some insights into BCD's strategy for 2020, specifically looking at how to deliver a frictionless experience for travelers.

To read more from Will on BCD Travel’s digital strategy, download the full Mobile Travel Trends 2020 report.

3.        The rise of the machine(s)

Spotify, Amazon, and YouTube use machine learning to pick and serve content that we are most likely to engage with. A corporate travel booking solution combined with machine learning could achieve the same engaging results. Mike Wake, VP of Technology at Travelport provides some great examples of how this trend will develop in 2020.

To get the full story on the machine learning trend, download the full Mobile Travel Trends 2020 report.

4.        Business travel ROI – The data revolution

A simple booking process with a single user will generate a vast amount of data from at least 10 different data sources. Most companies are failing to leverage these data points to improve traveler experiences. Sijia Li, Senior Data Analyst at Travelport, explores how data is going to help develop the travel industry in 2020.

One trend for travel brands in 2020 will be to switch from traditional statistic-based reporting solutions to more advanced analytics solutions that can process all forms of data. The benefits of doing this include:

·        Personalization: Big data can help travel brands understand what an individual traveler wants.

·        Predictive: Using data collected from the traveler's history to display preferred content.

·        Spend: Using the data can change the way the organization sees travel, from an unmanageable cost to a tracked KPI.

·        Sustainable data lake: New travel data lake architecture should take a more sustainable approach, led by business requirements that the technology is then built to follow.

5.        Now we’re talking business

For a time, the travel industry would jealously eye some latest development in consumer tech and hope for the day that a similar feature would be available to travelers. Glenville Morris, Product Director – Digital Insights at Travelport, believes airport mapping, augmented reality bag scanning, and live chat are shining examples of just how quickly these once ‘consumer only’ mobile experiences are flowing into the business traveler apps. It’s this rapid absorption that is seeing even infant technologies like voice move into the corporate space in a matter of months now, not years.

6.        Reimagining the business travel experience

Business travellers need a consumer-like experience. There is increasing value in agencies thinking more like retail giants such as Amazon, known for their exceptional user experience. Julie O’Sullivan, Head of Digital – Business Travel at Travelport, believes 2020 will be the year we reimagine the digital traveler experience.

Today’s travellers want an experience that is as easy and engaging as the best retailers in the world. End-to-end traveller self-service functionality is now the ‘north star’ of the biggest travel brands. Because we live in a mobile, ‘always-on’ culture, the ability to self-serve is what travellers want and expect. At the same time, we must recognize that there are times when the traveller will need to reach out to a human agent and it’s about providing the ability to do that in one tap.

To read Julie’s full description of how BCD reimagined the digital traveller experience, download the full Mobile Travel Trends 2020 report.

7.        The fourth industrial revolution

Every few decades we can look back and pinpoint a step change that moved us from one era to the next. Today, as we transform into the digital era Sharon Doyle, Global VP Product Management at Travelport, reflects on the changes the travel industry has made and looks forward to the next era.

We are already seeing companies offer ways of discovering and experiencing travel through virtual and augmented reality. With the emergence of 5G, travel brands will be able to create more immersive digital experiences. Furthermore, blockchain is likely to redefine the nature of the business itself. This will see contracts and payments become digitally secured which reduces much of the manual processing of travel transactions.

Read the full article from Sharon on the digital era for travel in the full Mobile Travel Trends 2020 report.

8.        Is your TMC ready for Gen Z

Gen Z (18-24-year old’s) were born into a digital world and when it comes to connected experiences, this generation has high expectations. Travel brands who think that having a sizeable social following and a mobile app prepares them for Gen Z… need to think again. Aisling White, Senior Marketing Manager at Travelport, explains how this generation of travellers are about to change the game once more for what innovation means in business travel. 

One aspect of Gen Z being so reliant on digital is their need to communicate in real-time, in the now. Real-time alerts can be made easier with the help of automation by anticipatory and predictive artificial intelligence programs. As these programs become smarter, automation will be enabled even earlier in the booking process meaning everything will be done for the Gen Z traveller via predictive analytics, rich personas, preferences, and anticipatory AI. 

Download the full Mobile Travel Trends 2020 report now for all the analysis and research data. Travelport are exhibiting at this year's Business Travel Show, register for FREE and visit the team on stand B1400 www.businesstravelshow.com

*GUEST BLOG* People First: Can you get more value from your travel spend by putting employees first?

The Japan office of a global technology company recently tested a four-day working week and found it led to happier workers and a big jump in productivity of 40 percent. They’re not the first company to trial new ways to retain a largely-Millennial workforce, who identify flexibility and well-being as top priorities when job hunting.

A move away from seeing return-on-investment from a savings and compliance perspective, to understanding the value that employees bring, is emerging more often. Savvy companies are putting their employees well-being at the core of their travel program.

“Maintaining healthy habits while travelling is nearing the top of the priority list for travellers around the world,” says Niklas Andreen, CWT’s Chief Traveller Experience Officer. “Being in tune with what matters to your employees is indispensable for retaining and attracting the best talent.”

So how do you make your travel program work for your staff and therefore your business?

1. Different folks, different strokes – Your workforce will have differing needs from their business travel. Some want their pick of hotel rooms worthy of featuring on their Instagram grid. Others have small children at home and are attracted to family-friendly options like same-day trips. It isn’t about offering luxuries but truly understanding what individuals value and giving them personally-relevant choices.

2. Always Connected - “There is a generation of people that are always connected” says Niklas Andreen, “It raises people’s stress levels not being able to connect. It has become a comfort factor. The tempo of business has sped up so much that people will send an email and expect a response within 30 minutes.” It’s critical to consider whether transport options, lounges and hotel rooms are equipped with strong connectivity. 

3. Tool up - Providing your employees with modern tools like a mobile app makes it easy and even enjoyable during the booking process. If you want your employees to stick to your policy,  the tools and services you provide must be on par to what they use in their everyday lives.  

It’s natural to want business travellers to stay within policy but some of the limitations compromise the success of their trip. Looking at ways to build your travel program around their needs will benefit your company. After all, what's better for your people is what's best for your business. Find more ways to build a travel program equipped for the future in the 2020 Global Travel Forecast.

This blog was written by Emma Woodhouse, Global Corporate Communications, CWT. Register for FREE and visit them at stand B230 www.businesstravelshow.com  

*GUEST BLOG* Flexibility is key to succeed in the business travel industry

Being the CEO of a hotel booking platform has the added benefit of staying in the loop of current and developing trends in the business travel industry. Collating the data of how people use Arbitrip to book their accommodation often has the same appeal as people watching. It gives me insight into the habits of my users and, as a data enthusiast with a deep love for the business travel industry, we have found some interesting trends that travel booking companies need to be aware of.

The quote ‘the only constant in life is change’ is never truer than in the business travel industry. The requirement for more flexibility in the sector comes from the need for individuals and companies to change their travel plans. Reasons to change plans are usually relatively simple. The names of travellers might need to be changed, the dates of the trip or even the trip’s duration. Sometimes these changes might be last minute!

A real spanner is thrown in the works when travellers want to make these changes, but are faced with amendment fees or 48-hour cancellation policies. Traditional travel management companies often do not do a lot to circumvent this. The speed of modern life means that most people demand quick and immediate changes to their travel plans, which requires enormously flexible booking options. At Arbitrip, we wanted to take this to heart when we abolished amendment fees, but the companies in the industry who refuse to be flexible will most likely find themselves left behind.

Another trend is the correlation between booking time, the traveller’s industry and their individual role. The ‘booking window’ (the time between booking and check-in) for some industries reflect their culture. For instance, high-speed, high-stakes cyber security companies will often have a very short gap between making their booking and their hotel check-in date. Conversely, financial institutions will often have booking windows of over a week. For the latter, they might prefer to benefit from the discounts that booking in advance brings and the stability of planning early. But in cyber security, the ability to travel on a moment’s notice might outweigh the increased cost of last-minute booking.

Once again, this calls for wider flexibility in the travel industry.

Certain events also have a trend of dictating travel habits. The most likely reason for a business traveller to book well in advance are conferences. For popular big-name conferences like CES in Vegas – the largest Consumer Electronics conference – we often see accommodation being booked as far as a year in advance! These bookings are unlikely to change, but when they do, it is usually to change the traveller’s name.

Finally, the week is a trend in and of itself. As people are reluctant to take time out of their weekends to travel for business, Saturday and Sunday are slow for business travel. Interestingly, the busiest days for travel are Tuesday and Wednesday, whereas the most popular days for booking are Thursdays and Fridays. When I see trends like this I always wonder: are people giving themselves something exciting to look forward to over the weekend when they book at the end of the week, whilst maximising their time abroad when they travel at the beginning?

The one theme that unites all these trends is flexibility and how necessary it is in the future of business travel. Travellers are demanding options that allow for the flexibility to make spontaneous, adaptable plans and long-term rigid ones.

This blog was posted by Benny Yonovich, CEO of Arbitrip, who are exhibiting at the Business Travel Show next month. Please register for your free visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com