A new booking and expense service dedicated to corporate travel in the marine and energy sector is preparing for full launch after a three-month beta testing phase.
Dubbed Vessul, the tool is the work of U.K.-based travel tech startup TapTrip and in October will be offered through travel management companies with clients in the marine and energy industries. Those sectors traditionally have faced a difficult travel booking environment; 98 percent of booking in the marine sector still takes place offline, according to TapTrip, leading to complications including missed trips and delays. Meanwhile, increased demand for energy and marine shipping services amid the Covid-19 pandemic has put additional strain on those sectors, making such travel disruptions particularly costly.
Vessul aims to simplify travel for companies in those industries by offering a booking tool with tailored features, such as a multi-city departures function that enables group travel from different origins to a single arrival location, charter flight bookings, a low-bandwidth app for use in limited connectivity areas while at sea, a live map showing recent incidents of piracy in a given area and an API-based tool to deliver Covid-related notifications.
Vessul recently exited a three-month beta test including 20 corporate users. TapTrip also is planning to build a version of Vessul tailored for use by small companies with unmanaged travel, the company said.