GETTING THE
GO-AHEAD

A year ago travel managers had to find a way through ongoing Covid-related restrictions and build in flexibility. Fast forward to 2022 and the focus remains on duty of care but also on ways to drive efficiency.

The approvals process is no exception, especially with increased pressure on the travel management community, navigating not only the post-Covid recovery, but also a very volatile market.

Recent research from German travel management association VDR makes it clear that business travel is back. The majority of companies are no longer imposing restrictions on business travel related to the reason for travel, with more than 90 per cent saying trips are allowed with no exceptions.

Therefore, any tools that can help in the approval process and alleviate some of the pressure of travel managers and travel management companies are a plus.

Shelley Arguelles, director of product strategy for American Express Global Business Travel, supports this and says the pandemic really highlighted the need to focus on duty of care obligations as well as how quickly environments can change.

“Having processes in place to automatically monitor itineraries before they are booked can help avoid travel to high-risk areas, keep travel bookings within policy, and inform travellers of everything they need to know before they go,” she says.

Automation is not only about driving efficiency and compliance and addressing duty of care but also investing in employees. Simon Jamieson, sales director for Northern Europe at International SOS, says: “It gives staff who are travelling a greater level of comfort that the organisation is investing in them and putting in an automated process that flags stuff to them such as the need for vaccinations or briefings on a destination.”

VDR president Christoph Carnier believes most companies now have automated approval processes in place which keeps the trip booking process moving. He adds that trips probably get flagged for intervention for safety and security or pricing reasons now.

Jamieson agrees and says instances such as travel to high-risk destinations will still get flagged. “There comes a point where the automation can drive it so far and then an individual has to take some action. What automation, such as our Travel Ready tool, can do is drive a whole automated workflow based on how an individual traveller answers a set of questions and what the outcome or required action for either the organisation or individual is.”

He continues: “What it will do is give organisations the ability to drive a workflow and a set of actions that they need to have shown or said they have completed. It might be that the individual is going to a location that requires some sort of meet and greet service which will trigger a manual processs for the group head of travel or the head of security to step in.”

Jamieson also says that as a starting point companies have been reevaluating their whole travel policies post-Covid and that in many cases, given current volatility, additional complexity is creeping in.

“They went from nobody travelling to realising they needed to get people out into the world to do business. What Covid has shown is that they need to be more mindful of some of the risks. Whether Covid-related or health and security related, companies are revamping their travel policies and some have become more complex as a result of everything that is going on in the world. So, they have put in automated workflows to help them stay on top of the compliance piece and the duty of care piece.”

A development in the works for the company’s Travel Ready solution is pre-booking compliance check functionality with criteria set by companies according to their travel risk policy.

David Bishop, chief operating officer of Gray Dawes Group, also sees the additional complexity in the process and trip approval has become a “multi stakeholder relationship where ESG, legal, HR, risk, safety and security all have their own priorities in assessing trip safety and validity.”

He adds: “We act as gatekeeper to make sure that travellers have followed their company’s internal approval process, which we record and document. We operate a ‘one system approach’ using the Atriis platform so we have a travel policy and approval flow built in for our agents and clients. In that respect there is 100 per cent synergy between the two. Put simply, we don’t miss a trick… 100 per cent policy compliance across all channels.”

Other technologies are also being considered to help ensure as seamless a process as possible with chatbots flagged in recent research from GBTA and FCM. It revealed that seven in ten travel managers are interested in artificial intelligence-enabled chat services to answer questions or even help make bookings.

However, the reality is that the technology has not yet been integrated into most TMC apps, according to the research. Less than 50 per cent of respondents said the apps could answer traveller questions. As always with technology, a balance needs to be found as further research from GBTA-FCM reveals that 40 per cent of travel managers view technology as among their greatest pain points of their TMC.

Jamieson points out that automation is only as good as the data that is fed into it, adding that International SOS is now working more closely with TMCs to ensure the right data is collected.

Collecting the right data is one thing but having the right to ask personal questions of individuals and store answers can be dangerous territory.

Both VDR's Carnier and Jamieson highlight GDPR regulations, for example, and say that travellers can’t be asked detailed health questions and that such information cannot be stored in traveller profiles.

With everything else the travel management community has to contend with right now to keep travellers moving and safe, it also needs to be mindful of data regulations.