Learn how to grab the attention of business travelers by using communication and collaboration tools that engage them naturally. Develop expertise in delivering the right information to the right travelers at the right moments throughout the life of the trip.

Explore highly effective tactics, from simplifying the portal interface to exploiting enterprise social networks to connecting people with the right content online.

Influence good decision-making by engaging travelers through the channels they’re already using.

Join these guest experts on this Tnooz-BCD Travel FREE webinar:

• Miriam Moscovici, director of emerging technologies at BCD Travel
• Steve Sitto, manager for corporate travel and small meetings at Genentech
• Michelle De Costa, global travel manager at Sapient

Moderator:

• Kevin May, editor and co-founder at Tnooz

Attendees will be able to interact live throughout the event using the webinar’s chat facilities.

This FREE 60-minute webinar takes place on Tuesday 14 February 2012 at 11am US/4pm UK/5pm Central Europe (all times local).

You can reserve your FREE seat at this webinar HERE.

The webinar is powered by GoToMeeting. System requirements: Windows7, Vista, XP or 2003 (PC users) or Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger or newer (Mac users).

We will record the webinar and publish on Tnooz following the event for those who cannot attend live.

Space is limited. Register for FREE now!

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

The company says a test environment at Cheaptickets (no relation to the US Cheaptickets consumer brand) was hacked over the weekend of the 22 and 23 October 2011, with “customer information stored from a period of nine months in 2008 and 2009″ viewed during the breach.

Travix has not disclosed how many passenger records were involved, but Dutch tech site Webwerald claims a figure in the region of 715,000. Travix has not confirmed or denied this number as yet.

The company claims the information has not been made public and no financial information such as bank account or credit card numbers were stored on the test server.

Security on the Cheaptickets website and live environment was not compromised, an official says, adding:

“The security of the test environment has been enforced and all consumer information has been removed immediately.”

Travix has also not confirmed whether passenger passport details were also obtained.

Sources claim the breach came about after the hacker managed to get into the system during a security update, but as soon as the story hit a number of tech sites in Holland the breach was contained.

A number of records with passport information were obtained, but this figure is said to be “very small”.

It also turns out that as soon as the breach became public the site was the subject of a sustained number of other attempts, mostly other hackers “looking for their 15 minutes of fame”. It is understood none of these were successful.

Cheaptickets became part of the BCD Holdings-fronted Travix mega-brand earlier this year, joining the likes of Vayama and BudgetAir to form a consortium of leisure travel companies.

Hotel site EasyToBook became part of the group when it was acquired by Travix in August this year.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but EasyToBook has a turnover of around Euro 100 million a year and is expecting to double the figure in 2012.

The sale to Travix marks the end of seven years as an independent company since its formation in 2004. EasyToBook has 65 employees and offices in Switzerland, Netherlands and Israel. The last 12 months have seen it sell over one million room nights.

The deal gives the other Travix brands access to more than 100,000 hotels through the EasyToBook platform, as well as the opportunity to create package deals.

“This represents a major step forward for Travix, which has built a solid reputation in the online travel industry by offering discounted airfares with its brands in Europe, North America and Asia.

“With the acquisition of EasyToBook, each Travix brand will become a one-stop shopping destination for travelers seeking great deals in airfare, hotels and packages.”

Other brands under the Travix umbrella include Vliegwinkel and BudgetAir.

BCD Holdings first unveiled the idea of creating a dedicated online leisure division with multiple brands in January this year.

The company carried out mergers with investments from ING Corporate Investments, Bluefield Investments and Beins Travel Group, which owned CheapTickets.

CheapTickets and Vliegwinkel operate in the Netherlands and Germany; Vayama does business in the US, Canada, the UK, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore; and BudgetAir has expanded from the Netherlands into Belgium, France and the UK.

The name Travix was finally unveiled in May.

NB: CheapTickets.nl and CheapTickets.de are not related to CheapTickets.com, which is owned by Orbitz Worldwide.

Thanks to the growth of smartphones and the social web, today’s work force has developed new habits and high expectations.

These center on interactive information-sharing, mobility, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration. But such expectations are changing the way they see, and move through, the landscape of managed travel.

Properly deployed, social web and mobile technology can help keep travelers informed and aware, offer newly personalized corporate travel experiences and feed vital information into the corporation’s program management framework and processes.

Travel managers and business travel suppliers can’t afford to wait to begin adopting these products and services into managed travel because travelers are forging rapidly ahead – with or without consent.

In the new age of corporate travel, the travel manager is the influencer and the traveler is the architect.

The challenge can be daunting without proper guidance. But by following these 13 tips, you’ll be well on your way to harnessing the forces of social and mobile web to support your managed travel program.

1. Incorporate the wisdom of the crowd for a true picture of program performance.

Social networks foster a sense of investment in the travel process by allowing travelers to contribute to the experience in a way that can have a positive impact on their peers.

Carve out a place for the travel program in your social enterprise (see below) to enable the sharing of user-generated content among your travelers.

2. Explore new collaboration tools.

Speak with your company leadership to learn about any plans to deploy social enterprise tools.

Most organizations are evaluating and deploying a new wave of modern collaboration tools at some level, and travel is the perfect area to champion the effort.

And don’t be afraid of LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook – use them to your advantage!

If your organization isn’t ready to deploy a social enterprise tool, you can still create a crowd of travelers to collaborate with on these open and now “traditional” social channels.

3. Achieve “better than policy” performance by engaging travelers.

Social web is an excellent arena for fostering healthy competition among peers, and can become the backdrop for incentive programs that promote traveler behavior changes.

4. Get rid of preconceptions.

Travelers’ enthusiastic adoption of consumer travel technologies and the social Web, as well as their increasing willingness to share their thoughts (good and bad!) with anyone, anytime, aren’t threats – they’re opportunities.

They are not “rogue,” they are early adopters!

5. Proceed with caution when going multinational.

Although it makes sense to have global mobile and social media strategies, the differing technologies and cultural attitudes mean there may have to be considerable variations across markets.

Engage the right stakeholders to head off obstacles and build cross-country support.

6. Help your organization understand potential new costs and opportunities.

Your new mobile strategy might entail bigger enterprise data plans or “app allowances” that permit travelers to customize their mobile devices to their travel lifestyles by reimbursing them for certain tools or services.

Some of these costs could be offset by working creatively with suppliers to establish advertising programs within the mobile sphere.

7. Work closely with your TMC.

Because they connect the company, the traveler community and the individual traveler, the travel management company can generate key data that can be used for intelligence and insight into a corporation’s spend, procurement opportunities and strategic objectives.

8. Learn from your road warriors.

Your travelers will tell you which mobile applications are most valuable to them on the road or which social networking tools help them stay productive while traveling.

Share the results with your travelers to help them find the tools best for them.

9. Empower the mobile traveler.

A well-informed traveler is an empowered traveler. Mobile tools give the traveler contextual awareness: What is happening and who is near me where I am right now?

Remember, one size does not fit all, and you should expect different travelers to employ different tools to meet their needs.

10. Support duty-of-care initiatives.

Travel is not without risk—and travelers should be secure in the knowledge that they can get help when they need it.

From major crisis to simple disruption, the traveler is connected to their company and their travel team by increasingly sophisticated mobile devices that can enable locate-and-assist services through reliable SMS and GPS technologies.

11. Assist mobile/cell phone procurement; be the traveler advocate.

The smart phone is the ultimate business travel tool and the channel through which travelers enable themselves.

Travel managers must ensure the mobile devices and data plans provided to their employees will support all types of traveler usage.

12. Refine your own information flow.

Get the information overflow under control. Use a mashup tool like Netvibes or iGoogle to customize your own information sources.

Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, supplier communications, industry news all in one place.  You can use this tool to stay up to date and can even share it with your travelers to bring them a collection of the most valuable news sources. [NB: Check out Netvibes.com/bcdtravel for ideas]

13. Lean on your suppliers.

Travel suppliers have social networking and mobile strategies of their own. Learn how they are improving their services and providing new channels for interaction; encourage appropriate uses of these new supplier services.

NB: This is a guest post by Miriam Moscovici, director of strategic marketing and technology Planning at BCD Travel.

Here’s the YouTube video, which is probably a couple of minutes too long.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR8oI9QQqS4

BCD Travel selected TripIt for itinerary management last year and this video takes a poke at business travelers who choose to stick with the old way of doing things.

Hopefully, “Michael,” the road warrior in the video who likes to track his trips by pinning up yarn from destination to destination on his office map, will learn, as the video puts it, to “evolve.”

It’s interesting, too, that a large travel management company sees YouTube as a means of informing clients about new tech products.

The pact formalizes the relationship between BCD Travel and GetThere as many BCD Travel clients already use GetThere.

In fact, GetThere says the tool is used by business travelers in 76 countries, and the majority of the 100 largest travel programs in the U.S. use GetThere.

GetThere says that BCD Travel, as a GetThere reseller, will be able to influence product enhancements and gets access to GetThere customer service resources.

BCD Travel, of course, already had an agreement with the GDS side of the Sabre business.