By Tina Husemoller, Fox director of client solutions support

The past few months have been a roller coaster ride for the entire industry, to say the least. But it ignites our passion for helping our clients, and now is a time they need us the most. Fox World Travel has been able to do some amazing things. We’ve been in constant conversations with travel managers, helping navigate required policy changes, evaluating their duty of care plans and more. But one of the most frequent topics discussed is the vast number of unused tickets that organizations now have on file due to COVID-19 related trip cancellations.

Amid the never-ending airline waivers we have seen since March, Fox’s technology team has developed a proprietary tool to support our clients’ unused ticket inventory.

Fox created a waiver exchange database that sits behind the online booking tool so that our clients can book travel online seamlessly, making self-service more efficient for the traveler and end user. The technology recognizes the applicable airline waiver, automatically applies it to the reservation and issues the ticket without agent assistance in most cases.

The ability to process these waivers automatically is game changing for organizations that have a healthy online adoption rate. Travelers can continue booking as they are accustomed to without worrying whether they are leaving unused ticket money on the table.

In addition to the waiver exchange database technology, our team has custom technology in place that identifies potential refunds for initially non-refundable tickets due to COVID-19. By taking this initiative on behalf of our clients, we have been able to decrease the amount of unused tickets on file and remove the burden from our travel managers of having to request the refunds themselves.

The travel managers who partner with us have reported significant value in the additional technology we have developed for efficiently managing unused tickets and potential refunds.

Brenda Rollin, administrative manager for H.J. Martin and Son,  said, “Thank you for the great service. We appreciate what Fox World Travel has done to help us through this time.”

Fox has also developed technology for leveraging UATP cards. We partnered with the airlines and our clients to obtain UATP cards where applicable, programmed technology that will leverage the card for specific travel parameters and developed reporting to help travel managers stay current on UATP card usage.

At Fox, we are always challenging ourselves to be forward-thinking, innovative and solution driven. COVID-19 has absolutely challenged us, and we are living up to our Soar Together and Find-A-Way philosophies with our industry partners and clients!