Travel professionals have many unanswered questions about how the business travel industry will recover post Covid-19. Will most of the countries keep their border restrictions? Will travelers quit Zoom to get back to meeting in person any time soon? Or can companies be sure their employees are safe when travelling abroad?
As the Covid-19 pandemic is way different from any other crisis the world has passed through in the past decades, travel experts do not have comprehensive answers to these questions, thus can’t properly estimate how the travel market will perform in the next couple of years.
But the business world can notice a global tendency to create the world's safest place for people to fly to and meet, tendency created by the fact that the World Economic Forum was cancelled twice last year. First time, it was supposed to take place in its home in the Swiss Alps, then in Lucerne-Burgenstock. But it was later moved to May 2021, in Singapore. Therefore, Singapore is now preparing to become the hub meeting location for all corporate travelers. Its safe hospitals, strict travel policies and low-risk Covid-19 environment make Singapore a viable candidate to turn into world’s safest spot to travel to. But there is also a serious competition from Dubai, as the city also implemented strict regulations in order to maintain a decreased level of Covid-19 infections.
This trend will lead to an increased demand for TMCs, as most companies will aim at a better internal organization when it comes to the safety of their employees and managing the budget they are going to allocate for business travel in the upcoming years. Companies need to focus more on their travelers’ safety while keeping an eye on their spending.
For these reasons, there’s an increased need for a centralized travel booking process that provides competitive advantages for businesses to keep the travel managers risk-free while reasonably reducing the cost and complexity of travel management. And implementing a reliable online booking tool can bring real benefits both for the company as well as for the traveling employees.
TMCs should be able to offer their corporate customers an optimized and straightforward travel management process, with everything happening automatically, from searching process to the final reservation, while granting safety and effective risk management through clear, well-structured communication.
Some companies have approved domestic travel but halted international travel for the rest of the year. Other companies are looking to government restrictions for a lead, which means staying on top of varied responses from open borders, to select travel corridors, to mandatory quarantines, to the ban of travelers from certain regions or countries.
As the business travel industry has changed in the past year, corporate clients are now more inclined to receive extra information about their travel plans and have manifested an increased interest for safe and hassle-free experiences. Thus, travel managers will need assistance from TMCs in order to have flexible ways of managing different levels of risks their employees might face.
TMCs need to make sure all these updates and requirements to be reflected in the technology they provide. This means a good implementation of the travel policies a company has, alongside configurations of approval chain profiles, and real-time actionable insights so companies can follow the activity of their business travelers, to always make informed decisions.
Our Corporate Self Booking Tool, NOVA, was designed to simplify the complex travelling process for the corporate customers so that TMCs can focus on their core business. So, if you are keyed-up about any news that might influence your corporate customers’ travelling plans, contact us and get the right travel technology for your corporate travelers.
