Travel managers should be recommending travel apps to their business
travelers, according to a Global Business Travel Association report. Few
companies do, however.
GBTA based its report on responses from 521 managed and unmanaged
travelers who have traveled on business at least once in the past 12 months. Among
participants, 95 percent owned a smartphone that they used for business
purposes. More than three-quarters have downloaded travel-related apps.
Navigation apps (think: Google Maps, Waze) are the most common among
54 percent of survey respondents. Next up: airline and hotel. Airline apps were
downloaded by 46 percent and hotel apps by 45 percent. Thirty-four percent had
downloaded third-party travel booking apps like Expedia, Orbitz and Kayak.
About a quarter had downloaded itinerary management apps, ground transportation
apps (like taxis, Lyft or Uber) and general travel review apps like
TripAdvisor. All of the most commonly downloaded apps were consumer oriented.
That may owe partially to the fact that few companies actually
recommend apps to their travelers. Just 17 percent of respondents said their
companies recommended a menu of travel apps. GBTA suggests corporates are
missing a golden opportunity to influence traveler app selection and
preferences. Indeed, among travelers whose companies do recommend apps, 91
percent called those recommendations useful.
Companies with managed travel programs were more likely than others to
recommend apps, but not by much. This led the study authors to recommend a clear
next step: “When companies have a managed
travel program, they can perhaps do a better job recommending TMC apps in an
effort to promote booking through preferred channels.”
Usage Rates
Millennials and Gen X travelers
were more likely to use travel apps than were Baby Boomers. A 2013 Boston
Consulting Group report posited that half of business travelers would be Millennials
by 2020, and as more Millennials enter the workforce, corporates will need to
have a clear strategy around app usage for multiple business functions,
including travel. This should include, according to the GBTA study, top-notch
technology and apps that are as easy to use as consumer apps. Without that, Millennials
could turn out to be the heaviest users of agent assistance, as they get
frustrated with subpar technology and reach out for personal help.
But corporates may not want to
wait five years to pull that strategy together. Frequent travelers, regardless
of age group, display similar app usage profiles to Millennials and Gen Xers'.
These travelers spend more travel dollars and make more travel-oriented
decisions with the information provided on their smartphones. Understanding and
supporting frequent travelers' needs now and evolving that strategy to support
incoming Millennials may be the smartest play.
Pushing The Liability Envelope
The challenge, according to
several travel buyers attending The BTN Group’s Innovate conference in New York
City this month, is the issue of liability. Traveler safety and security and
data security immediately emerge as travel managers consider the concept of
recommending specific apps. “One-hundred percent of companies are concerned
about data security when it comes to travel apps,” said one corporate travel
app supplier. “It is their first question when they come to us.”
For some companies, it’s a
matter of checking each recommended app through IT and clearing it for the travel
program. The second hurdle is making travelers understand that even though the
company recommends a certain app, the corporate IT department is not prepared
to support that technology if something goes awry.
For other companies, these
issues remain deal breakers. The alternative is to create internal travel apps,
a task that a healthcare company travel manager characterized as a futile
effort that results in apps that are too clunky to compete with consumer
solutions.
That’s a strong argument for
pushing TMC app technology and focusing the liability and support issues on the
contracted supplier. Either way, travelers will continue to download and use
their travel apps. Whether the company wants to manage that usage and
potentially capture the related data is the question each corporation has to
answer.
The GBTA report authors
looked to the positive: “This
is another opportunity for travel programs to assess and incorporate the mobile
apps that they consider useful and could help travelers not only be compliant
with travel policy but make the experience of business travel a better one.”