When you embrace emerging tech for business travel, you ensure that you can continue to cater to evolving Traveler needs in the face of an evolving travel landscape.
It’s no secret that the travel industry is changing at a rapid pace, and the travel landscape is continuously tumultuous.
On the industry side, you have, firstly, the rise of new technologies. There’s the growth and slow adoption of resources like NDC. Additionally, there’s an oncoming generation of new business Travelers who expect travel experiences that are in stark contrast to the experiences that prior generations preferred.
Within the travel landscape itself, you have pandemics both old and new. Geopolitical situations are also a potential threat. Of course, climate disasters continue to disrupt travel, make travel more costly, and make it more unreliable and threaten the safety of your Travelers.
All of this can make a Travel Manager’s job a little more than stressful.
However, when you embrace emerging tech for business travel, you can weather many of these challenges significantly more easily.
The State of Emerging Tech for Business Travel
According to the Global Business Travel Association, emerging tech will at least partially be responsible for fueling future business travel growth. Here’s what the GBTA found regarding the current state of emerging tech for business travel.
- 75% of travel buyers are interested in adopting an AI-powered travel program chatbot to automatically answer travel questions.
- Approximately 50% of travel buyers are interested in offering blockchain-based booking or payments.
- In Europe, more than a third of travel programs have a full-time employee dedicated to travel tech. This is slightly more than is the case in North America.
- European companies also lead in travel tech spending.
In other words, the interest is there, but the implementation, particularly in North America, is not. However, as mentioned, by embracing emerging tech for business travel, Travel Managers can see their jobs become easier and less stressful, and their goals for their Travelers and organizations become more easily realized.
4 Ways Emerging Tech for Business Travel Makes Travel Management Easier
1. Appeal to younger Travelers entering the workforce.
As younger Travelers enter the workforce, members of Gen Z and, to a lesser extent, Millennials, have a very different idea of what kind of business travel experience they’d like to have. Unlike their predecessors, they may value work-life balance to a greater extent, and those values extend to their business travel. As such, they may not be as willing to travel as often or in the same manner as previous generations.
However, emerging tech for business travel can help better cater to these differing generations. For example, Gen Z and Millennial business Travelers are particularly very interested in “bleisure” travel. This is travel that combines a business trip with a leisure trip. The leisure portion of the trip is either tacked onto the beginning or end of the business trip, as a few extra days of free time in a destination.
These types of trips can be difficult for Travel Managers to juggle, as they’re not simply booking a round-trip flight for a Traveler, and overseeing everything in-between. Generative AI tools for itinerary planning can come in handy in these instances. Additionally, emerging duty of care tech, such as tracking technologies, can help Travel Managers ensure that, even when a Traveler is blending leisure travel with business travel, that they stay safe while they’re on the clock for the employer.
Considering ways that you can use tech like this to cater to Gen Z and Millennial business Travelers, rather than simply prohibiting bleisure trips altogether, can go a long way to inspiring employee loyalty and, thus, retention.
2. Increase efficiency through AI tools.
We’ve talked a lot about how AI tools can make business travel easier. Whatever your stance on AI, there’s no arguing that AI tools can streamline many, many of the arduous, time-consuming tasks that Travel Managers may find filling their plates on a regular basis. Think putting together itineraries, hunting down the best travel deals, searching through data sets to put together a report on the company’s travel expenses, or even just compiling expenses from a single Traveler’s most recent trip. Up-and-coming AI tools can take over all this and more.
3. Keep an eye on your sustainability.
Now more than ever, organizations with frequent business travel engagements are looking at their sustainability, from SMEs all the way up. Emerging travel tools can help Travel Managers get a better handle on their current carbon footprint and then adjust for their sustainability goals moving forward.
You can find a range of new tools that can assist you with calculating your existing business travel carbon footprint, setting a carbon budget for your business travel, tracking your carbon footprint over the year and how well it’s adhering to the budget, and even finding more sustainable, eco-friendly travel options when it’s time to book a trip.
4. Get better deals and save money on your business travel.
Lastly, emerging tech for business travel can help you find the best deals possible for your business Travelers. We see it in the NDC capabilities like continuous pricing that are continually being adopted by Travel Managers. We also see it in continuous rate monitoring, which ensures that, if Travelers are booking their own travel, they’re getting the right rates based on a variety of factors, including any agreements that the organization may have with certain hotel brands.
Learn More About Emerging Tech for Business Travel
Learn more about emerging tech for business travel at the JTB Business Travel Waypoint Blog. There, we cover all the need-to-know developments within emerging travel tech, such as NDC, AI and more.
Need help deciding which tech tools are the best fits for your teams? Get in touch today to see how we can help.
