Keeping abreast of new travel technology can be an overwhelming task. With the rapid pace of innovation and continual release of new products, you could use an expert in your corner. Working with a technology-forward travel management provider, like Fox World Travel, is an ideal place to start and unravel the complexity of how to deliver the most value to your organization and travelers.

With that in mind, here’s a few ways a travel management company (TMC) should be using technology to enhance your travelers’ experience from trip planning through their travel journey.

Locating and Messaging Technology
From global safety concerns to local severe weather, the world frequently disrupts corporate travel. When these incidents occur, what proactive measures does your organization take related to the security and comfort of your travelers? Fox offers technology which allows you to instantly locate impacted travelers on a point-and-click map. Upon identifying the travelers in harm’s way, the system provides built-in messaging to text your instructions to your travelers or verify their well-being.

An added bonus: this tool also allows organizations to text useful information to travelers at relevant times, such as direction to use a specific car service at the moment their flight lands or a reminder that breakfast is included upon arriving at their hotel.

Global Distribution Systems (GDS)
You might be thinking how can the decades-old GDS ‘cryptic green screen’ be considered current technology? In recent years, the major GDS providers have introduced new graphical user interfaces, or GUIs, for travel agents to access content such as airfare and hotel rates.

At Fox, we were an early adopter of Travelport’s Smartpoint GUI.  Why? Because GUIs like Smartpoint provide considerably more functionality such as:

• airline seat maps, including SeatGuru content
• hotel photos and reviews (like TripAdvisor)
• and, airline branded fares and ancillaries

Empowering agents with this point-and-click technology allows access to similar information travelers find on consumer sites and is more effective to use than cryptic commands. The result: superior, more relevant service is offered to your travelers when they call an agent for assistance.

Online Booking Tools (OBTs)
Many organizations configure their online booking tools (OBTs) to guide traveler behavior and enforce policies. While this remains an important function of an OBT, overall usage (adoption) will increase when the traveler’s experience using the system is also considered. Frequent enhancements and new functionality means these systems are always changing.

A TMC is your OBT guru – constantly communicating updates, and their impact on your travelers, as well as making recommendations to enable new features. Fox believes OBT expertise is so critical to delivering a positive traveler experience that we made the investment to become one of only four Certified and Preferred Concur partners in the U.S.

George Kalka
Sr. Director, Global Sales