Letting the business travel community search and book whatever they want online for business trips is not unheard of as Google has been allowing its employees the freedom since 2008.
It’s a trend that Traveldoo founder and boss Nabih El Aroussi thinks will take hold within the next few years especially because as much of 50% of the business travel market remains unmanaged.
Posted in Travel Policy
Tagged Business Travel, Compliance, Mobile, Technology, Travel Policy
Walking the floor of last week’s Business Travel Show threw up a number of interesting developments which were less about innovation and more about services to help travellers on the go.
A few of the developments are worth mentioning as they demonstrate the different approaches companies are currently following while attempting to take into account the data and insight needs of the corporate.
Rearden Commerce has crunched a decade’s worth of Big Data, namely data on 67 million flights from 24 US airlines over 10 years, in a bid to enhance flight search in its Deem Travel booking platform.
A project of Deem Labs, Rearden personnel used Apache Hadoop, Apache Pig and MySQL to transform and analyze US Bureau of Transportation Statistics data on the 67 million flights from 24 US airlines from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2010.
If you’ve ever wondered what little things business travellers appreciate most when travelling by air, travel management company Egencia has done a study.
Among the top five are extra leg room, 70%, avoiding the middle seat (interesting given the post earlier this week on avoiding window seats), 61%, jumping to the front of the security queue, 59%, access to airport lounge, 47% and inflight wifi access, 43%.
Posted in Ancillaries
Tagged Business Travel, Leg Room, Priority Boarding, Tnooz, Wi-Fi
The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 30 published a great opinion piece called “The Coming Tech-led Boom,” which outlined three fundamental shifts the writers believe will transform this century like electricity, telephony and mass production did the last one.
The article highlights “big data,” smart manufacturing and wireless communications as the great transformers. It’s exciting to consider how each development is affecting the travel industry and business travel specifically.
It’s as if these global, multinational and midsize corporations had blinders on about their employees and their travels.
American Express Global Business Travel surveyed nearly 100 of these businesses about their corporate travel policies and found several shocking gaps, including one related to mobile adoption.
“None of the travel policies addressed the use of mobile applications or even referenced tools they may have available for travelers to use on the road or when working remotely,” American Express states. That is “none,” as in zero out of 100.
Posted in Innovation Gap
Tagged American Express, Compliance, Mobile, Survey, Travel Policy
KDS has announced plans for a new streamlined booking process which it claims will produce full itineraries for business trips in under one minute.
The technology giant unveiled Project Neo at its annual KDS Now! showcase for travel buyers and TMCs in Paris yesterday.
Posted in Innovation
Tagged Booking System, Business Travel, Compliance, KDS, Travel Policy