NB: This is a guest artlce by Mike Uomoto, senior vice president for product management for Rearden Commerce.
Everything in your palm. A dream-come-true, especially for those who live on the road. Hauling a carry-on and a laptop bag from one city to the next, in pursuit of the next golden opportunity makes it tough to carry much more.
The growth of consumer travel apps would appear to be the answer. But are they really?
Here, counting down from ten to one, are the top reasons why the hype doesn’t help when it comes to corporate travel.
10. I booked the same trip last week, why can’t you remember that I prefer a non-smoking room and an aisle seat!?
Frequent travelers are creatures of habit, and have very defined preferences. Some consumer travel apps let you set those preferences for a single trip, but aren’t configurable to set and present those preferences across multiple or repeat trips forcing you to re-enter the same thing over and over.
9. There’s so much more to business travel than hotel, air and rental cars.
When on business, travelers need to be able to manage the whole experience – from leaving home to booking entertainment and conference services.
Integrating several services in a single “app” saves time, frustration, and ultimately money.
8. !!*( #-)##-**- another user name and password??!!
Multiple consumer travel apps mean business executives have to log in to multiple applications with different user name and password formats. We all know we’re not supposed to write them down, but who can blame us?
The security risk is often overlooked, but it really shouldn’t be.
7. I just know I can find something cheaper but I can’t spend all day looking for it.
Funny thing about business travelers – they’re conscientious about doing the right thing. When presented with all the options, they want to save the company money – even if it introduces some inconvenience.
With consumer travel apps that are not tied to company policies, this is an impossible task.
6.  Wait. It’s Tuesday, wasn’t I supposed be in Cleveland?
Without calendar integration – a missing link in many consumer travel apps – it’s just too easy for itineraries to be lost in the manual translation.  Many travelers end up printing out hardcopies of all their various confirmations and end up with a mess of papers.
5.  It’s my money!??
An informal survey at Boston’s Logan International airport found that business travelers estimate they lose as much as $500 every year in un-submitted expenses.
Consumer travel apps don’t help tie travelers to their expense reporting system.
4. Tell me again — which service provider am I supposed to use?
Businesses negotiate deals with travel service providers as a way to control costs, but when preferred providers aren’t automatically populated or highlighted in the travel app, the traveler is left to their own devices when booking and managing their trip. It’s inefficient and is a major driver of #1 below.
3. Â We spent HOW MUCH on business travel this year!?
When it comes to travel budgets these days, being able to track and manage the end-to-end costs is a critical component of success. Consumer travel apps without their tie to company policy don’t support that need.
2. Â One app, two app, three app, more….
How many apps does it take today to plan a business trip?  One for every discrete step in the travel process is too many.  And they don’t work with one another.
Business travelers don’t have the time – or the patience – needed to navigate multiple apps.
1. PIE
Ultimately business travelers don’t want to be hassled – they want a personal, integrated experience that is within the boundaries of their company policies and programs.
They want everything tied together neatly – in one simple package – that integrates the end-to-end components of their trip, ties it with their calendar, and is contextual and location aware.
Bottom line
The proliferation of “apps” actually increases the burden on corporate travelers and doesn’t do much for the T&E team back at the office either.
The future lies in a location aware mobile-enabled platform that is both relevant and contextual. Road warriors can log in once and view all the aspects they need to plan and manage a trip, including their company’s travel policies and preferred suppliers.
If done right, the right mobile solution can help create a positive experience for the traveler, and drive compliance and control, translating into a win-win for everyone involved.
NB: This is a guest artlce by Mike Uomoto, vice president of product development for Rearden Commerce.
About Special Nodes
Wow, this post is the epitome of why the business travel industry is so far behind consumer travel when it comes to traveler-friendly tools.
I could go through each of the line items above and de-base them one by one, but that would distract from the main point: Business travelers are right now using consumer travel mobile apps. In fact, they’re probably the biggest user of those apps today.
Why? Because they’re better! The democratization of mobile development means anyone can produce an app and the best wins. Rearden (or Concur or Sabre or anyone else) simply cannot beat that.
The notion of creating your own, all-in-one do-all, tool is great from the perspective of seamless integration and personalization. But it misses a major point: Your tool must overcome with integration what advantage all the other tools have in functionality and user experience.
Rearden should be creating a platform to integrate with those “useless” consumer tools — bring your “PIE” advantage to those tools and provide the best possible experience for your travelers, don’t try to re-create the functionality in your walled garden.
@evan – worth noting that Concur bought TripIt.
Yes, thanks Kevin.
I didn’t want to turn the discussion into Rearden vs Concur, but I do believe that Concur’s acquisition of TripIt was at least partially a recognition that consumer tools are important in the business travel world and TripIt’s open API approach is working.
Rearden DOES have such a platform.
Agree with Evan. I suppose there are a number of valid points here but something is better than nothing. Reardon is my company’s travel booking service. Their web interface is way behind the times and makes booking work travel much more of a hassle than personal travel is. I downloaded their app a year ago but it was useless (in fairness, I haven’t used it in at least 6 months so maybe it is improved). Perhaps rather than pointing out flaws in competition, Reardon should work harder on their “PIE” and provide something useful.
Consumer apps have traditionally done a better job in the area of user experience and therefore got better adoption, good for them they deserve it. As with all things competitive, I am now seeing both business travel apps and consumer apps investing much more in innovation (and acquisition) to improve their user experience.
Business travelers really want a mobile app that uses the same company authentication credentials, allows you to change/cancel/rebook your itinerary, helps make sure you are following company policy…transparently and automatically integrates to other company applications like expense management.
I agree with many of the comments that not all of this is being done today. But I also believe that business traveler service providers are the only ones who can provide this deep level of integration to a company and they should.
I had just about the same reaction as @Evan when I read this. More than anything I think @Mike lays out the opportunity for business travel technology providers to enhance their products to meet the needs/desires of their customers. Just because things “aren’t” where we want them to be today, doesn’t mean they “can’t” be tomorrow.
Mike, Apple’s iCloud, coming this fall is supposed to correct/improve the problems that you mention in your post. According to Apple iCloud will seamlessly update and push information to “all” of your devices: http://www.apple.com/icloud/what-is.html
Let’s see how this works out…
JSC
Well, there is one “app” that works very well for all business travellers – it’s called a business travel agent. You use the same thing to communicate with this “app” but it is done by voice, not by pressing buttons. The app is quite remarkable. It has automatic voice recognition – no need for passwords. It also has good memory facilities, so no need to input frequent flyer details, etc time and time again, full diary functions and the diary function even operates a new piece of software called “sixth sense cognitive analysis” a truly stunning innovation which reminds the business traveller of things he should know, even without the traveller realising he or she should know it.
The agent “app” works anywhere, back of taxis, whilst running across a departure lounge, inbetween meetings and you only need to provide partial information – the app works out everything else from limited information – For example, “I need to go back to LAX” the app interprets this simple statement as “Book a flight at 11:00 am Monday, LHR to JFK, premium economy, a compact car (with SatNav) at LAX and 3 nights accomodation at the Hilton Hotel (room only) returning on the 1645 LAX to LHR” – the app books it all, downloads to a diary, outlook, inlook, android, smart phone, not-quite-as-smart-but-looks-good phone, PA/ secretary (another “app” which does not get the attention it deserves)and all the traveller has to do is say “Yes”
Good stuff, eh? Beat that, techys.
Yup, your friendly neigbourhood buiness travel agent, errr… “app” Get one today!
@murray – knew this one would be right up your street!
As I started reading this, my first thought was this should be a list of top 10 reasons to use a corporate travel agent! Thank you for beating me to the punch.
Signed, you friendly neighborhood corporate travel agent
Yes, I know, I mean LAX not JFK
Great answer Murray–spoken with wisdom and humor
@Murray – love the comparison, very well put. I’ll add one more thing: the agent app costs about GBP 30 per use (at least that was what it cost me when I was on traveling projects). And sometimes is moody.
I had forgotten that! The “personality” software feature may be changed (very simply) on demand. Quality does cost money, of course. The agent “app” does have all sorts of reporting functions, though, including the “analyse your travel to death” option (the “me” app has it) – it can tell you in 501 different ways that you went to Amsterdam on Monday and back on Tuesday, how much you should have spent, did spend, where you spent it, which rather charming young lady/ gentleman (depending on person involved/ orientation etc) you spent it on… errrr…. did you need that last one….
Though you have your points, I somehow disagree that the apps are useless. I use my smart phone often when I’m traveling at it helps me a lot especially in checking directions and looking for best value hotels.
I’ll be watching out for a mechanical-turk based “agent-app” startup coming off the back of these (great) comments
Ah! @melLifshitz – if you had used the “agent app” and the “secretary app” properly in the first place, you would already have directions …. and your hotel booked.
This was right on target – however, I have found one app that helps to integrate all of my travel – still have to go to multiple sites to get the rental car, air, etc. But TripIt is really good at combining every thing into an itenerary and maintains the critical links, maps and I can send it to multiple contacts and calendars.
It is SO NICE to see someone finally stepping up to the plate and acknowledging the Biz Travellers lament. We get screwed royally when we travel on data roaming charges. The arrogance of the so called “mobile gurus” to think this isn’t a problem really irks me. So to compensate I have to have 3 mobile phones. (Plus one for a disposable sim card in a new country). Data roaming is just appalling. Dear Neelie Kroes was supposed to fix this… well we are STILL waiting.
I just spent an hour on the phone with my current UK provider who does NOT provide a roaming data package. Vodaphone is not much better with a crippled 25MB file limit per day for “selected” countries.
So the real people who use data – the road warriors are getting squeezed. BADLY.
Hello Brussels, Washington, Anyone home?
“Leave a message on my analogue tape driven answering machine after the beep”
I had fun reading all your comments and would have to agree with you all. Another point would be if you book on mobile apps how do you resolve problems like no booking or no show or anything? Who do you contact? @Murray Harrold – I still think that Travel agents are here to stay.
)
Thank you, @Evan, for speaking on behalf of all of us who are not only business travellers but also consumers.
Are consumer apps a silver bullet? No. Should a corporate travel program make use of them? Oh, yes!
Have a look at a BCD Travel’s new white paper “The Customer Always Knows Best: Leveraging B2C Strategies in Managed Travel Programs”, which – you guessed right – makes the point that corporate travel programs should seek to making their programs more relevant to their travelers and how mobile is a powerful enabler.
http://www.bcdtravel.com/aw/home/Global_site_80195/en_us/Newsticker/~cjng/The_Customer_Always_Knows_Best_Leveragi_82336/
What a lot of fluff and waffle. So, at BCD they have worked out that a) You should do your job propery, b) Be prepared to look at whatever new stuff comes along a c) Give the client a bung every so often (okay, a highly disguised bung). If they have only just worked that out, I am surprised they have many clients at all. I mean “evaluate the tools and pick those that best fit their programme” No sh-one-t, Sherlock. What on earth do people think we business travel agents have been doing for the last n number of years?
For example, during 9/11, we discovered that during a crisis text messaging works best. Calls could not get through but text could. During the ash cloud, you could have any app you wanted but the most productive thing an sgent could do for his or her client was just “to be there” – that the client knew that someone was out there and on their side. There is no app that does that (and any that may have done – as in any real crisis, packs up. We use for example, twitter – it is a fast and efficient way of communicating both with suppliers (eg airlines) and indeed customers (and for communicating with airlines – free, even).
What do people think virtuallythere.com or checkmytrip is? I have not seen one major feature of any app that is any different or better than the agent to client communication systems deployed by the major CRS systems – and the major CRS systems deployed those tools ages before any of the new apps or indeed smartphones came along – in business travel we have it already, been there, done that.
Our job is and always has been, to make sure our clients get to where they want to be, when they want to be there in the most cost effective manner. Our aim is to achieve that seamlessly, with a minimum amount of fuss – our clients are paid by their companies to land and manage multi million dollar deals. They are not paid to faff around trying to work out the best way to get from Much Binding in the Marsh to Khatmandu.
Any respectable business travel agent’s job is to know their clients well enough to be able to achieve that efficently, by whatever means is required, all the time, any time.
If your business travel agent does not do that – change your business travel agent.
@Murray Harold, thanks for reading the exec summary. Your reply actually confirm our point that consumer apps do have a role in a corporate program as you seem to be doing a fine job in using them for your clients. You miss a key point in our argument though as we are not advocating that an app should replace an agent. They do however allow travellers to complement the service they are getting, using the channel they prefer as and when they want it
Sorry, I just get extremely irritated when we get some johnny-come-lately takes what any self respecting agent has known for the last 30 years, dressing it up in some fancy language and making out that they are suddenly the best thing sincel sliced bread. I also wonder why they are suddenly called “apps”. Much of what we use was never called an “app” before and has been around for many, many years in one form or another.
Interestingly, when the internet came to travel, it brought a load of techys to travel, coupled with a fair number of people who think they knew how travel works. Quite bright people, granted and with a fresh look on things, granted … but few of them bothered to study travel itself – probably, for them, far to mundane. It’s the old story, when all else fails, read the manual. As witness many of the more far fetched, hair-brained concepts that get thrown up from time to time by people who believe they have just expierienced their road to Damascus moment.
From an agent persepective, there are a those websites that have functions that are really rather useful and make our lives very much easier. BUT there must still be an agent to distinguish what does and does not make sense. What will work and what won’t, what is realistic and what isn’t.
I suppose, if you really want an “app” then it would be one where the client receives a message over the “app” that presents the information he or she needs to know, when he or she needs to know it. … Oh! Hang on! It’s called a text message or an email…