One of the most actively developing segments of the travel industry is the direction of corporate travel. Over the past few years, digitalization has significantly changed many aspects of business travel.
The emergence of new tools has allowed companies to significantly increase the efficiency of their business travel, as well as better control costs. Today we will talk about the main changes in the corporate travel market that have become possible thanks to technology.
Now you can organize a business trip completely online
Private travelers are no longer surprised by the ability to buy a plane ticket or book a hotel room from a computer or phone. But just a few years ago, such an opportunity did not exist for company employees who went on a business trip.
Fortunately, in the last couple of years, online business travel booking tools have emerged that are as functional as those used by private travelers.
Today, an employee going on a business trip can flexibly plan his route, booking hotels from a computer or even a phone shortly before check-in, or buying tickets while already near the airport.
Digitalization of payments
Along with the advent of online platforms and mobile applications, serious progress has also occurred in the area of payment for bookings.
If previously a company had to work with an offline travel agency that issued paper invoices or sent faxes, now a business trip can not only be organized online, but also pay for tickets and hotels from a linked corporate card.
The choice of options has increased significantly
The process of organizing business trips used to have a number of features. One of them is the inability to get a wide range of options. The companies worked with travel agencies that were connected to specific search engines for booking flights and hotels.
As a result, to gain access to the full range of options available on the market, it was necessary to work with several agencies. But even in this case, it was unrealistic to use these options due to the offline process of approving a business trip. It looked like this: the agency selected a list of options to suit the customer’s parameters, sent them for approval, then issued an invoice, and after payment the reservation was made.
It is not surprising that many profitable flight or accommodation options have already “gone away” during this time. With the advent of online booking systems, travel agents can access all options on the market in a couple of clicks and pay instantly. This opened up serious opportunities for savings, not to mention speeding up business processes.
Optimization of document flow
The old process of interacting with agencies was not only slow, but also generated a huge amount of related documents. They had to be stored somewhere, kept records, all this was not very convenient.
Now online booking platforms allow you to receive all the necessary paperwork from invoices to travel confirmation documents directly in the company’s personal account.
Conclusion
The business tourism industry has lagged behind the private travel segment for many years. Digitalization has penetrated here more slowly, but this only means that changes will happen faster. As a result, today’s business travelers have many of the same options available to people booking a vacation – and soon, organizing a business trip will become completely indistinguishable from packing for a private trip.
