Travel management company Gant Travel Management introduced on Tuesday a new meetings tool that enables online registration and in-policy air travel booking for attendees.
The product, called Gant Together, allows clients to create a meeting on the Gant platform and invite attendees via email, who then can register and book air transportation within the client's meetings policy.
The catalyst for Gant Together was demand from clients who wanted the company to support meetings by applying the appropriate meeting travel policy to its attendees, Gant president and CEO Patrick Linnihan told BTN.
"It's no surprise that [a company has] a travel policy, but every meeting is different," Linnihan said. "There are attendee groups and sub-policies. You could have a 25-person meeting with five contractors, three VIPs, [others]. How do you support them? We've modified the process so it's scalable. You tell us the policy, who the attendees are and the subgroup they fall in, and we'll support them with the correct policy that matches them."
For example, a senior executive attendee might be allowed their choice of class of air travel. The choices made available to them when they book through the tool will include all allowed options. A general attendee whose policy dictates only economy class will see only that option when they book their flight.
"What planners know but don't talk about is that people need after-hours support," Linnihan said, adding that this tool will allow agents to better serve attendees should they call in with any complications to their travel plans, such as weather delays.
And if that attendee's phone number is in the system, even if they are not a client employee, "they would appear to the agent with their meeting and policy attached like a regular Gant profile traveler," said Gant chief information officer Jenni Murer, adding that there is no limit to the subgroups a meeting policy can have.
When creating a meeting in the system, travel managers can individually add attendees, or they can upload them via a spreadsheet. Events and invitations are visible in real time on the screen when being created. The user fills in fields on the left side of the screen while the information populates a template on the right side. In addition to the meetings policy and attendee list, a user can add information regarding negotiated rates with airlines or other key booking information.
Once an attendee is registered for a Gant client meeting, their key information, such as their frequent flyer number and phone number, remains in the system and will prepopulate the next time they register for an event.
Meeting managers also get reporting, from manifests to a rooming list, which is updated in real time as attendees register or cancel. They also can see from where travelers are coming in graphics format, or they can download the information into a spreadsheet. And there are controls for what each meeting manager or planner is allowed to view.
The product is built on top of the Salesforce platform and connected to Gant's global distribution system. "There is the capability to do AI machine learning in the future," Linnihan said. It also is on top of the Concur platform, "so if you go to Concur Travel and you are one of our clients, you will see the meeting you are attending in your trip library, and you will see it in TripIt."
The next iteration of the tool will include hotels, which Murer said could be ready in about three weeks. There also are modules for candidate travel and corporate relocation in the roadmap, Linnihan added.
Pricing for the tool starts at $175 for a single meeting, with packages ranging from $1,250 for 10 meetings to $21,000 for up to 300 meetings.