Egencia unveiled a trio of features for its global business
travel platform on Wednesday at the Business Travel Show. COO Mark Hollyhead
told BTN each feature was the product of Egencia's overarching digital strategy
that has focused on data integrations to provide new solutions to benefit both
the corporate client but also provide more business value to Egencia's supplier
partners.
Egencia Hotel
Conversations
Hotel Conversations enables
business travelers to communicate with booked hotels via messaging embedded in
the Egencia mobile app. A traveler can ask questions, confirm details and
update travel plans at any stage of the trip—for example, requesting later
check-in when a flight is delayed. Meanwhile, hotels can use the system to send
guests welcome messages or offer additional services ahead of arrival or during
the travelers' stays.
The capability leverages both live human interactions and
automated chatbot exchanges built on machine learning and algorithms, according
to Hollyhead. The goal, of course, is to move toward more automation rather
than less. Egencia tracks patterns in the data to determine what business
travelers most need from their hotel suppliers. "It's early days still,
but we are learning about the questions asked by corporate travelers on, say,
the day before the travel takes place," he said. As Egencia finds those
patterns, hotel partners can refine the volume and nuances of automated
responses to deliver more personalized support. "We want to present [our
hotel partners] with the best chance at serving that customer," said
Hollyhead. That's a win for the supplier and for the corporate client.
Success will depend largely on how much content and effort
hoteliers are willing to put into the capability, but Hollyhead said most
operators are motivated by more than happy customers. Operators also are
looking at the dollars and cents: "We are looking to see how the messaging
can reduce calls into the hotel. That's a cost for owners and a big
issue," Hollyhead offered as an example. "We have enough data to
start to help the hotel in these ways and begin to show that a relationship
with Egencia is less about the economics in the margins and more about how we
can help our partners run a smart business."
Egencia Air and Hotel
Egencia's Air and Hotel capability is focused on running
smarter hotel programs. The corporate travel agency has leveraged parent
company Expedia Group's hotelier relationships to offer packaged air and hotel deals.
The packages offer access to hotels whose prices otherwise could push them out
of certain travel policies. The spot-buying deals put the costs in range.
"We are looking at supply and demand in the
marketplace," said Hollyhead. Once the flight is booked, "we market
that [flight] out to hotel suppliers, providing a channel through which they
can discern whether to make an offer to the business traveler." The offer
is available to book immediately or within 10 days of booking the airfare. Asked
whether such offers incentivized corporate travelers to book away from
contracted preferred properties, Hollyhead said, "We haven't navigated
that with this particular product."
He argued, however, that hotel programs have been
notoriously difficult to manage. "The truth is, most programs are not that
robust," he said, adding that achieving a better attachment rate could be a
strong win for the buyer.
Even so, the capability is configurable to turn on or off,
and the Egencia platform can always be set to indicate whether any hotel being
offered is out of policy or, further, to restrict any hotel that is out of
policy. "That's a larger debate and one that we have within Egencia,"
he said about offering nonpreferred content within the channel. "But we
are pretty rigid in the belief that you need to offer expanded content,"
he said, adding that buyers could gain some important knowledge from the data
kicked back from the new feature. "If you abstract it all out into data, preferred
hotels or not, we may be able to provide the customer with some compelling
market intelligence in terms of what they should expect to pay in the markets
where they travel." Travel programs without the leverage to negotiate
preferred hotels would seem to benefit with no caveats.
Egencia Traveler
Tracker
The online corporate travel agency's final update in the
trio is a more straightforward duty-of-care improvement. The revamp of Egencia's Traveler
Tracker, which enables travel managers to monitor employee locations city
by city and provide support during emergencies, includes the option
to search a more general geographic area through the region search tool. Managers
trace a circle or square over an online map to define the region—city, pair of
cities, general area around the site of a crisis, etc. The tool returns the
profiles of all travelers with booked itineraries in that area. Traveler Tracker is accessible on both the mobile app and desktop, and the regional search capability currently is available on desktop. Hollyhead said the
improvement in tracking is a direct response to
travel manager feedback to offer a simpler, more accessible tool that delivers
information more quickly. "If we can't do that," he said, "the
travel manager's reputation and authority could be compromised."
The updates are the latest move by Egencia to
bolster its platform with travel management functions beyond planning and booking
travel. In October,
the company added managed travel features like trip change and cancellation
functions.
Updated on Feb. 22 at 11:40 a.m. Eastern to correct a few items: Traveler Tracker launched prior to 2018, its region search capability is available only on desktop, and the app serves not just travel managers but also travel approvers and travelers.