Modern business travel booking tools aim to make the Business Travel Experience more intuitive, seamless and sustainable. But for many Travelers, these tools are unfamiliar and sometimes intimidating. Here’s what you need to know.
Maybe it’s been a while since you booked your own travel. Maybe an assistant has been helping you out, or you have an in-house Travel Manager. You might not recognize today’s travel booking landscape. In the last decade, myriad business travel booking tools have become especially commonplace.
These tools are helpful in many ways. However, they can be confusing in others. It might be first instinct to avoid rather than implement them. The first step to taking advantage of all the benefits these modern business travel booking tools offer, though? It’s to understand them.
Here’s a quick overview of what you need to know about the many resources that are available, often right at your fingertips.
New Distribution Capability (NDC)
New Distribution Capability, or NDC as it’s more commonly called, is an airline industry-launched initiative. It changes the way you book airfare. If your Travel Management Company or Travel Manager has implemented an NDC-enabled booking platform, you’ll no longer be served airfare that’s limited by strict airline inventory parameters. Instead, the platform will provide you with customized, personalized offers. This will give you flight booking options that better fit your past booking behaviors and needs.
In other words, you’ll be able to find and book airfare that’s more suited to your travel preferences faster. That’s not to say that NDC’s capabilities are perfect just yet. It is, though, continuously improving and expanding, month after month. With the current progress on normalizing NDC and NDC fares gradually replacing traditional ones, there is a good chance you have already booked an NDC fare without even noticing it.
Travel-as-a-Service (Taas)
You know SaaS, but what about TaaS? TaaS, or travel-as-a-service, is a concept crafted by JTB Business Travel partner Spotnana.
Basically, according to the company, TaaS encompasses the Spotnana “cloud-based platform,” which “pulls together a massive amount of travel content in real-time from a wide range of suppliers and aggregators, makes [business] and leisure travel options available through a modern shopping experience, enables travel agents to provide assistance in a highly efficient manner when needed and gives [business] travel managers the ability to reduce travel costs through policies and negotiated discounts.”
The platform can also be white-labeled and integrated into other software products or websites, as is the case with JTB USA partner Goodwings, making it suitable for business use.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Maybe you don’t yet use ChatGPT to plan out a travel itinerary or scrape the internet for the best recommendations for a client dinner in a foreign locale. However, you probably use AI in other ways. Maybe you ask Siri to give you a run-down of the weather at your destination. Maybe you use an AI tool to compile notes from a conference you attended.
Now, more and more business travel booking tools are using AI to look at your data. Then, AI provides booking recommendations accordingly. In some cases, AI tools can ensure those recommendations comply with your company’s business travel policies, too.
Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR and AR)
No, you don’t need to strap on a fancy headset to view the virtual world, at least not when it comes to VR and AR-empowered business travel booking tools. Instead, hotels and MICE venues are beginning to use VR and AR as selling tools for Travel Managers and MICE professionals. These professionals want to know what a venue or hotel looks like before sending their teams there, especially if they’re hosting an event there.
VR and AR can make seeing and experiencing these venues remotely possible, with no costly trips to visit venues in person. This gives Travel Managers and event planners confidence in what they’re buying before they buy it. It may also give Travelers peace of mind, if anxious about visiting a new destination or venue for a particularly important client interaction.
Expense Management Technology
Expense management can be one of the most frustrating elements of the business travel process. If your teams have been long going about this the old-fashioned way — holding onto paper receipts and delivering them by hand to your Travel Manager or accounting team — it’s time to stop.
Consider taking advantage of business travel expense management tools. There are tools that can prevent extraneous spending before it happens. Some tools can seamlessly and easily track every purchase. There are even just tools that team members can use to scan those pesky paper receipts in order to turn them in.
Investing in this type of technology can ensure your Travelers remain compliant with your travel policy and ultimately save your company money in the long run.
Duty of Care Technology
Beyond the solutions that make your travel booking experience more convenient, or in some cases just more enjoyable, others are a bit more serious. This is the case when it comes to duty of care-related technology. You have a duty of care toward your Travelers. As an Executive and decision-maker, it’s up to you to ensure your Travelers are kept safe and comfortable on the road.
Thankfully, more tools are coming online that can help with this, addressing pain points that have plagued Travel Managers and Executives in the past. For example, tracking technology can help you keep an eye on your Travelers’ whereabouts at all times. No, it’s not micro-managing. It’s keeping your teams safe in the event the worst comes to worst while they’re in a foreign country.
The Easiest Way to Begin Taking Advantage of These Business Travel Tools?
It’s all about partnering with the right Travel Management Company that can provide them and then help you navigate them, from NDC-enabled booking platforms to a TaaS like Spotnana. JTB Business Travel is that partner. Get in touch today to learn more.
