GUEST BLOG: Is Your Travel SuperCaliFragilisticExpialiDocious?

Spit spot. Your travel agent just booked your flight along with the expected hotel accommodation. Everything is practically perfect in every way, right? Well almost. The difference between a good trip and the most extraordinary one comes down to how three key ingredients manifest on your mobile phone: irresistible destination content, sensible user experience and indubitable dynamic communication channels.

It begins with a quest to discover ‘what to do’ and then ‘how to do it’ as soon as you have booked your flight and lodging. This isn’t an insignificant question when you consider the volume of travel taking place:

In 2017, a study of outbound tourism found that the average UK resident was abroad for a total of 10.2 nights, and spent £616 while there. In total, 72.8 million trips were taken, amounting to £44.8 billion spent abroad by tourists from the UK.  Conversely according to Visit Britain, the 39.2 million overseas visitors who came to the UK in 2017 spent £24.5 billion – both setting records. These figures represent a 4% increase in volume and 9% (nominal) increase in value compared with 2016.

Next, toss in a myriad of sites all declaring they have the answer to your destination needs.  But navigating all of this disparate content without the ability to weigh previous travel behaviour or current context feels like a ‘piecrust promise’ – easily made then broken, Miss Poppins herself would say.

Lastly, how we learn about all of the delightful accoutrements that can make or break one’s trip require that the communication surrounding them ‘step in time’. In other words, the delivery of push notifications, text messages, and email about ways to enhance and tailor your journey have to operate in a perfect symphony.

Good news, anything can happen if you let it. Truly. Travel agencies like Travel Up, Uniglobe and Wexas within the United Kingdom are already tapping into the latest mobile capabilities and best practices thanks to the Amadeus Mobile platform. This same white label platform powers CheckMyTrip, now the World’s Leading Travel App as of 2018, and is available to travel agencies worldwide to service and delight their travellers wherever they go.

It takes a village to successfully deliver a world-class travel app experience across content, user experience and multiple channels. Hence, Amadeus is cultivating the best and brightest global content and technology partners across activities, dining, parking, transfers, tours and more through the Amadeus Mobile COLLECTIVE to help travel agencies access everything they need to own and operate their travel apps so their travel clients enjoy the most productive and memorable journey.

Do you have a travel app, but not sure how to take it from good to brilliant? Well begun is only half done according to Mary Poppins. Pop by the Business Travel Show & Travel Technology Europe on 20-21 February at Olympia London to hear from top experts cultivated by Amadeus on the breaking trends and best practices defining the present as well as shaping the future of travel.

This post was written by Michelle Batten and her job title is Global Head of Marketing for Mobile, Amadeus. Register for your free visitor pass now at www.businesstravelshow.com 

GUEST BLOG: How tech is changing ground transportation

Technology has not only changed the way we communicate and the way we work, it has changed the way we travel. Less than five years ago, it was the norm to phone for a cab, hoping that it would turn up and the driver would be outside waiting for you, using the phone dispatcher on the phone as the sole point of contact.  No details of the driver would be given to the passenger and there would certainly be no live tracking of the journey. Now, apps like mytaxi enable passengers to receive the drivers name, phone number, unique taxi ID information as well as the all important image of the driver as standard. Putting passengers in control and giving travellers, family members and employers peace of mind.

Travel providers are constantly giving more choice to individuals, and this has changed the way we think about our travel options, tech companies have to work harder to ensure their services are top quality to make sure it is their app we download. We are moving towards an age of “access over ownership”, the need to own a car for example, is quickly diminishing.  This change in our culture has led to an evolution in ground transportation with more and more people turning to spending on taxi journeys over car ownership, particularly in cities.

This is also true for employers - with the realisation that you can get more from your staff if they can work while in transit and this has contributed to a move to multimodal transport. Gone is the need to own a fleet of vehicles or provide company cars, unless job dependent. Trains, buses and taxis get travellers from A to B while also giving them valuable time back to respond to emails, work on documents and presentations, or to just unwind after a hectic day of meetings, while travelling safely to their destination.

The move towards booking platforms has made travel managers jobs far easier too. Technology has enabled the development of solutions that allow for expense management tools to work alongside booking platforms. No longer do we need to scramble around for receipts or spend hours filing expenses, centralised reporting can be completed monthly, leading to greater accountability and productivity for business travellers.

This post was written by David Savage, UK General Manager at mytaxi who will be at stand B1300 at Business Travel Show next week - 20-21 February 2019 at Olympia London. Please register for a free visitor pass at www.businesstravelshow.com/register 

GUEST BLOG: How OCR technology improves mobility during business trips

You’re probably familiar with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, but are you aware of the benefits it can bring you when integrated with a mobile travel expense solution? We invite you to read further to find out how OCR can help you improve travel expense management and the mobility of business travellers.

According to a recent IDC research paper, OCR is one of the most-wanted features in a travel expense management solution. It is flagged as a must-have tool for companies that want to improve travel expense management processes by increasing efficiency for both managers and business travellers.

The trends for 2019, as highlighted in the same research, are straightforward when it comes to what companies are looking for in a travel expense management tool. Managers and business travellers will continue to shift towards solutions that offer better user experience through ease of use and multi-device support.

A mobile expense management app with OCR capabilities works as follows:

·                Your employee snaps a picture of the receipt;

·                The technology behind the app creates a digital format of the receipt;

·                The tool identifies essential data such as merchant name and net amount.

Allowing employees to do this on-the-go generates multiple benefits for your company, such as reducing the time it takes to submit expense and the ability to control expenses in real time. Your travellers’ experience is significantly improved with a positive effect on work satisfaction. With automated processes, the hassle of paperwork is eliminated, human errors are drastically reduced and work is completed faster. Less time spent submitting expenses means more time and energy to focus on the main objectives of your employees’ trips.

OCR can help you improve travel expense management and the mobility of business travellers in several ways, including:

Avoiding piles of receipts

Manually processing and checking paper receipts is inefficient, risky, and most of all a waste of time. Thanks to OCR, paper receipts are accurately transformed into digital format in an instant meaning data no longer risks being lost with a gust of wind or forgetful traveller.

Increasing efficiency

As they start using the OCR tool, your business travellers can create expenses in just a few seconds with more precision and accuracy, leading to a decrease in operating costs. A reliable OCR tool captures the most important fields from the receipts your employees want to submit.

Easy access 24/7

No matter where they go, employees have instant access to a user-friendly tool that helps them scan, process and submit receipts on the go. With such a tool, your employees can submit reports immediately and managers can keep track of their teams’ expenses.

Credit card integration

When travellers pay with a credit card and if the credit card is integrated with the mobile app, the receipt and the amount of that receipt are automatically matched. This is a clear advantage for the controller and a simple way to avoid duplicates in expense reimbursement requests.

Improving reports and reimbursements

An automated expense management app helps you increase travel policy compliance within the company by blocking non-compliant claims. Having access to the app from anywhere improves the quality of the data going in, and therefore also of your reporting. And finally, it allows for faster employee reimbursement: claims are submitted and approved much faster.

This post was written by Valérie Morel, Vice President Sales and Marketing, MobileXpense, who will be exhibiting at the Business Travel Show in London on February 20^th and 21^st. If you want to learn more about OCR, this page may interest you.