Tech Providers Hone 
Safety, Sustainability 
Focus

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic forced travel technology providers to quickly turn around solutions handling a new reality of canceled trips and heavy restrictions, but it also lit a fire under many longstanding areas of focus—including sustainability and artificial intelligence—that will remain of heightened importance in a post-Covid world.

One lasting impact could be the re-emergence of pre-trip approval functionality. Travel Tech Consultant president Norm Rose said he found in 2017, while doing research, that companies had largely moved away from requiring pre-trip approval. As most companies shut down travel to only essential trips, of course, that brought back the need for approvals, and tech and travel management companies have been working to support that need.

Corporate Travel Management, for example, announced a new global technology suite that includes a global trip approval system, sourcing passenger name record data from all of CTM’s global locations to feed into the TMC’s risk management systems. Egencia earlier this year announced a new tool that uses artificial intelligence to help set up and manage the trip-approval process.

Even as governmental and company restrictions on travel ease, the need for pre-trip approval will continue, particularly as companies have a higher focus on employee safety and sustainability coming out of the pandemic, Rose said.

“It’s being re-introduced in a different light,” he said. “There’s more scrutiny over the necessity of a trip.”

To that same end, technology to help companies track and limit their carbon footprint also has been a focus over the past two year. Serko, for instance, last year incorporated a carbon-offsetting-oriented display into its Zeno booking tool. American Express Global Business Travel developed a “Green Compass” tool that lets companies experiment with different “levers,” such as using rail instead of air or switching to greener hotels, to see the impact on their carbon footprint. 

Automated and AI-powered service features have been a focus of tech providers over the past few years as well, exacerbated by smaller support staffs and increased wait times at service centers for airlines and other travel suppliers. Relying too heavily on the technology, however, is a risk and will only frustrate travelers if they cannot get an issue handled, GoldSpring Consulting partner Will Tate said.

“Everyone is reaching for the AI and chat piece, but they have to make sure they deliver something that doesn’t upset people,” Tate said. “The sweet spot is differentiating what can be handled from automation.”

As such, the pandemic equally has highlighted the value of a skilled human touch alongside the technology, Berlin-based TMC Comtravo managing director Jannik Wässa said in a recent ITB Berlin Convention panel.

“The technology can handle more and more, but there still will be the situation where you need human support,” he said. “Technology mimicking the person can take the load off the agent, and the agent jumps in when necessary.”

Travel technology suppliers also have been reacting to the changing patterns and purpose of business, particularly as more employees have work-from-home or hybrid office arrangements. Get Travel Solutions founder and principal consultant Karoline Mayr said online booking tools and other technology suppliers likely will focus more on group travel as more companies will need to arrange get-togethers for workforces that no longer see one another on a daily basis.

“There’s a change in the way that we’re traveling for business, where every trip is an event,” according to Mayr. “What’s the technology that comes along with that, and how are they going to book it?”

Bringing all of that together will be a challenge for tech companies, as a lot of the meeting space, for example, is not currently something that can be booked through global distribution systems. Still, some tech providers already have been making progress. TravelPerk last year launched a new solution, TravelPerk Events, meant to help team book such company events as offsite meetings and seasonal parties. SAP Concur partnered with Groupize to offer an end-to-end self-service meetings management solution. One of the newer entrants on the online booking side, Psngr1, has incorporated a collaborative trip planning tool where users can duplicate bookings and add trip events like meals or meetings to a joint itinerary.

Consolidation, of course, remains one of the biggest trends in the travel technology industry, with a long list of smaller technology providers becoming a part of larger firms over the past two years. It’s a trend that was happening long before Covid-19, but the pandemic’s devastating effects on the travel industry paved the way for a buyer’s market for many of these companies.

The consolidation and other market conditions has pulled some tools off the market. Upside Business Travel, which focused on unmanaged and lightly managed business travel, ceased operations last year, as did SME-focused Lola, which was later absorbed by Capital One. Coupa has turned its technology acquirements Pana and Yapta into its own new travel offering, no longer making them available as independent stand-alone services.

As TMCs have acquired online booking tools to offer as their own proprietary technology, there are “fewer independent tools to choose from,” at least those able to offer solutions on a global scale, Partnership Travel Consulting SVP of global travel technology integration Guy Snelgar said during a recent BTN webinar. As a result, some buyers are feeling more pressure to default to their TMC’s technology rather than source their own tool. That doesn’t mean there won’t be continued innovation in independent tools, he said, citing Psngr1 and API-based travel ecosystem Spotnana as examples.

“Whenever there’s a gap in the market, something new comes along,” Snelgar said. “I don’t think it’s yet to the stage where it’s going to become harder and harder to source things, because the market has a way of regulating itself, and I believe there will always be a demand for a TMC independent tool.”

The technology-first platforms, meanwhile, have been making their own moves, in particular TripActions, which over the past year has acquired Scandinavian TMC Resia, Comtravo and U.K.-based Reed & Mackay.  

“Technology companies are moving into travel, and travel companies are moving into technology,” said Comtravo’s Wässa. “Who will win? You can learn travel, but it’s much harder to learn technology, so we believe in the long run it will be the technology players who are accelerating and driving innovation in this area.”