As the business travel community descends on Dallas for the Global Business Travel Association Convention, we round up some of the news and trends that will be talked about at the event.
Read on for developments with artificial intelligence and NDC and new partnerships and technology enhancements from travel management companies and technology players.
Major airline and hotel financial results in recent weeks revealed that business travel continues to lag leisure travel when it comes to post-pandemic recovery.
The 2024 Global Business Travel Forecast from CWT and GBTA revealed that air bookings in the United States are down 25% compared with 2019 while leisure bookings are down 9%. Factors such as high inflation, increased costs for air and hotel and the spotlight on sustainability continue to put pressure on the corporate travel segment.
This has led to a number of trends such as multi-destination trips to maximize productivity, which have increased 10% versus pre-pandemic levels. A further trend is blended travel with a recent GBTA poll revealing that two in five travel managers report an increase in blended travel.
The travel forecast highlights long-term planning from travel buyers as a trend to watch out for in 2024 alongside an increased focus on technology such as data analytics and price optimization tools to help buyers and travel management companies get the best value for corporations.
Spotnana aims to help companies track and reach travelers following an integration with medical and security services specialist International SOS. The integration supports NDC and EDIFACT bookings, exchanges and cancellations, according to a release.
Through the partnership, Spotnana is able to pass booking data and any subsequent trip modifications to International SOS in real-time as a digital travel record. This means travel administrators have access to the most up-to-date information on the location of travelers.
Spotnana also recently added self-service functionality for travelers to redeem airline ticket credits.
Troop, the meeting planning specialist and a PhocusWire Hot 25 Startup, has unveiled a meeting planning and group travel logistics platform called Troop One. The technology has been developed to make organizing in-person meetings easier.
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The platform’s functionality includes AI-powered destination search to help meeting organizers find optimal locations based on a variety of data points and meeting criteria including cost, CO2 emissions and travel times. Troop Local gives meeting organizers access to a network of local experts and planners. The platform also includes an attendee dashboard, booking tool and expense management functionality.
Brex, the financial service and technology company, has launched a service enabling businesses to create and manage group corporate events for employees.
The group travel feature allows companies to book and manage events, travel, off-site locations and more for globally distributed teams of any size with an unlimited number of attendees.
Brex has observed a material increase in off-site spend across its customers in recent years as the rise in distributed teams has meant new ways of working. However, the tools for creating, organizing and managing large corporate events haven't kept up.
The company also recently expanded its spend management platform by adding corporate travel management powered by Spotnana.
AmTrav has revamped its Change Trips feature set to make it easier for business travelers to change, cancel and upgrade their trips without having to speak to a travel adviser. The company plans to roll out enhancements enabling travelers to change entire trips in one go and change all or part of an air booking. The technology upgrade will also offer travelers, who are requesting changes, options to take a different flight with the same airline or another carrier.
Additional features include applying company travel policy to changes and automatically updating spend reports and travel tracking.
Snowfall is enabling customers using its Juntion multimodal travel search and book platform to book Brightline, Florida’s high-speed rail network serving Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach. The rail service is adding an Orlando station later this year and also plans to connect Las Vegas to Southern California.