2019 started off like any other year: busy calendars, overbooked flights, sold-out hotels and a bustling meeting schedule. Business was booming and travel managers were busy. Their time was spent assisting travelers, negotiating contacts, managing rates, auditing itineraries, and other mundane tasks — Until everything stopped.
When the pandemic struck, businesses and travel managers across the globe had a sense of uncertainty, urgency, and panic rushed in. Some employees were safely at home while other business travelers were thousands of miles away. Bringing them home safely became mission-critical. To complicate efforts further, flight cancelations occurred in airports worldwide as borders were closing, and travelers were stuck both near and far.
It all sounds like a horrible sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. You lived through it, and the odds are that you can tell the story better than we can.
Travel managers scrambled to make sense of what was happening as changes took hold by the minute. Each country — and even municipalities — enforced their distinct set of regulations, which made adhering to them seem impossible. Assembling travel data from all relevant sources was the only way to make progress on tracking travelers down and bringing them home safely.
Duty of Care is a topic commonly spoken about. However, this pattern shifted dramatically at the beginning of 2020, when duty of care became non-negotiable. Being able to locate, communicate, and promptly change travel itineraries had never been more important. Faced with obstacles on a scale like never before, travel managers were up against the clock to bring their people home. This seemingly impossible task was made easier for those with sufficient data reporting available.
One Traxo client — an international fashion retailer based in Canada — found the comprehensive data provided by Traxo to be its saving grace as the country shut down the borders. Because roughly 60% of their Hotel and Air bookings were made off-channel, they couldn’t rely on their TMC or expense reports for access to their travel data.
The retailer’s travel data needed to be complete and easily accessible for the travel managers to make swift decisions in the best interest of their travelers. Thanks to Traxo’s ability to capture data from all sources (not just TMCs and or-business portals), the retailer’s team determined where all of the travelers were located and brought them home before the border closures took place.
When the pandemic began, organizations without complete travel data struggled more than those with established data aggregation strategies and dynamic travel policies. It's common for SME businesses to have a “find and book the lowest fare” policy in place. However, this approach can be risky if you're unable to locate, track, or communicate efficiently with your travelers. Businesses who found themselves in this dicey scenario were left scrambling to contact travelers via cell phone or text message or even through a family member or partner. At scale, this methodology is impractical, at best, and poses a tremendous safety risk, at worst.
As you’re well aware, COVID-19 created a tremendous lull in business and leisure travel. On the positive side, this downtime allowed businesses to re-think travel programs and, in some cases, do a complete overhaul. Because 2020 illuminated the gaps in corporate travel programs and policies, travel teams were better prepared to implement meaningful policy changes and new software solutions for travel data aggregation, expense management, risk mitigation, and other areas of concern.
During the pandemic, business travel may have stopped, but meetings continued. A shift toward virtual meetings occurred and, in turn, companies realized cost savings by temporarily eliminating expenses related to business travel.
Now, however, people are itching for life to return to normal. With some businesses reopening and much of the United States open for business, air traffic is rising, and business travel has experienced an uptick. Once more is known about COVID-19’s numerous variants and booster shots are developed, business travel may finally experience its post-pandemic Renaissance.
With all that has occurred over the last 1.5 years, business priorities have shifted (hopefully for the better), and travel programs have been reimagined.
Knowing that there has been a major change in the way businesses handle their corporate travel programs, employees should feel more prepared and supported as they begin traveling again.
Data analysts across the globe have been crunching numbers to predict what the future has in store for the travel industry. IATA, a trusted leader in the airline industry, has compiled this comprehensive economic report on the industry's recovery.
Below are some generalized thoughts on what traveling in 2022 may look like:
Regardless of the state of your corporate travel program in early 2020, it’s safe to say that organizations and business leaders walked away with countless lessons on how to improve the safety of business travelers and the importance of comprehensive travel data for quick and decisive crises management.
Traxo supports comprehensive, real-time, actionable data that allows your business to pull reports and quickly locate travelers 24/7 — regardless of the traveler's original booking source. It's also easy to transfer Traxo data to the service providers that need it most, including duty of care providers. If you are looking for ways to enhance your travel data as employees take to the skies again, contact Traxo today.