The Personalization Puzzle in a Pandemic-Changed Environment

Tailoring business travel to personal needs wasn’t born with the pandemic, but issues that have emerged from its impact introduce new concerns into the travel management picture. “We’ve begun conversations internally with our top stakeholders on tools and methods to help focus on people, the planet and personal well-being and bring this into the overall equation along with cost on the decision to travel,” said Takeda Pharmaceuticals travel and meetings lead Michelle DeCosta. 

Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Travel Programs – More companies are looking at diversity and inclusion within their travel programs, and whether preferred suppliers reflect the corporate’s current community of diverse travelers—in terms of gender, racial background, LGBTQ+ status and mental and physical differences, including health and chronic disease. These types of efforts have become more critical for corporates since Covid-19 ushered in movements like Black Lives Matter that have raised awareness around social justice issues, but also more generally shined a light on the social impact of corporate practices. Ensuring respect for and common identity with diverse travelers within travel program policies and among the travel supplier set has been a growing concern for travel managers and one that speaks to the stronger ‘people-first’ trend in managed travel programs. 

Personas & Policies – While it’s one strategy to offer broad inclusion, it’s also important to understand the individual traveler. Emerging from a pandemic, employee roles, like sales, may be ready to hop on planes as quickly as they can. Their companies may have different ideas. “We may have fewer road warriors,” said EAB VP of business solutions Steven Mandelbaum, speaking about his own company, but potentially also predicting broader trends. “But I think there will be more infrequent business travelers to manage.”

Those changes could impact how travel managers look at policy, and also what services they need to provide to travelers. Infrequent travelers may require stronger guidance and policies to support decision-making. Having fewer road warriors could translate into less detailed data about their buying patterns and histories—and could make true personalization efforts more challenging. That said, the effort to offer more tailored and predictive itineraries will press on. For many companies, however, it may require set ups that include larger tranches of data than their own travelers produce. In that case, travel management companies may be well positioned to develop personas and persona-based trip recommendations based on their larger data volumes. 

Content Concerns – Fragmented content continues to be a concern, but more TMCs are aggregating multiple sources outside the traditional global distribution systems. That has been a goal of the ‘next-generation’ TMCs like investor-darling TripActions and the freshly minted, tech-first Spotnana. But it’s not limited to the new players. Expedia’s recent deal with American Express Global Business Travel is one big example. The online travel giant will provide its immense hotel content to the TMC as part of the deal that sold Expedia’s corporate travel division Egencia to GBT.

Hotel content isn’t the only focus for travel managers and intermediaries. Increasingly, airlines are slicing inventory and branded fares out of the traditional GDS and only making them available through New Distribution Capability channels. Accessing that content will be important to provide travelers with all the choices available—along with the amenities they require, which aren’t baked into the TMC options as consistently as travelers would expect. As TMCs access more NDC content, however, corporates should be able to negotiate and deliver tailor service bundles for their travelers—at least that is among the NDC’s many goals. If travel managers begin to personalize programs by traveler type (see personas, above), tailoring different service and amenity bundles for traveler types could be on the horizon. 

Technology Transformation – Advanced technology and its ability to crunch vast quantities of data and bridge that data between diverse systems is the path to personalization on a larger scale. Some travel managers are looking to architect their own technology platforms, working with open systems that would allow them to assemble the capabilities and features they want, from profile systems to booking tools and a number of service providers linked into the universe via open application programing interfaces. In this universe, the TMC would become one of many partners but still serve a central role. It’s an emerging practice for travel management, but one that has gained momentum with some big investments in new players that are serving this vision. As business travel ramps back up, travel managers may see they have more options than ever to customize their ecosystems with a people-first approach.