Business travellers have evolved significantly over time. Today's business traveller is connected through technology, using travel apps and mobile devices. They expect their travel to be an intelligent, personalized experience. Looking ahead, companies will take a holistic approach to traveller management, influencing traveler behavior through incentives and tailored experiences that meet generation-specific needs and expectations. Gamification techniques may be employed to make policy adherence and productivity feel more like game play.
8. Today – travel is Apps
• 17,000 Travel Apps on the Market
• 160 million app-compatible devices are
owned worldwide
9. Group Discussion Point
How many people in the room
have a Travel App?
• What ones?
• How many?
• Do you use one or a combination?
• What do you like / dislike?
• What do your colleagues say?
13. Future – Business Travellers
The Millennial Business Traveller
Goodbye…limited, restricted
Hello.. limitless, unrestricted, innovate and infinite.
In 2015, Millennials became the biggest generation in the
workforce. One of the biggest challenges for businesses
today is integrating the Millennials or Gen Y twenty-
somethings into a Baby Boomer culture.
No doubt you have read the volumes of the data on
Millennials in today’s workforce, but here is a quick
reminder…
16. Young
Connected
Tech Savvy
‘C’ Suite
Rushed
VIP
Knowledgeable
Smart
Old School/Mature
Demanding
Impatient
Brand Loyal
Not Loyal
Independent
Managed
Unmanaged
Interested/Excited
Bored
Points Driven
Price Sensitive
Time Poor
Stressed
Chilled
Explorers/Tourists
Travel Agents
Hoteliers
Describe today’s Business Traveller
Today’s traveller
17. Understanding today’s
Business Traveller
Business travellers are assumed to be focused on carrying out a work-related task,
rather than feeling emotionally stimulated during their trip.
Recent competition among travel service providers in the context of the business travel
market has highlighted the need for a better understanding of business travellers as a
tourist segment, including how they evaluate their travel experiences.
“Business travel usually takes qualified professionals and managers to destinations
they have not selected themselves”
(Opperman, University of Bournemouth, 2000).
18. Understanding today’s
Business Traveller
Traditionally, corporate travel policies have been structured around
“dos and don’ts,” whereas today, many companies are opting for a
more subtle tone — one that focuses on encouraging travellers to use
certain tools.
As generation Y freely mixes work and play, Millennials can
sometimes lack clear boundaries when it comes to business travel. As
a consequence, it falls to the employer to ensure factors like lack of
experience and easy access to technology don’t create risky
situations.
Today, Travel Managers needs to innovate their travel programme
tools to ensure policy adherence as well as productivity and safety.
19. It’s the mullet of travel: business in the front, party in the back.
“Bleisure” trips, or ones that combine business and leisure, are rising fast as a common
form of travel worldwide, according to a new report from Bridgestreet Global Hospitality
published by Skift.
The survey, which interviewed 640 respondents, found that 60% said they were more
likely now to take bleisure trips today than they were five years ago
Understanding today’s
Business Traveller
20. Future – Traveller Management
What is Traveller Management?
Demand Management – influencing number of trips taken
Buying behaviour management – influencing how trips are
planned
21. Future – Traveller Management
Take a fresh, critical look at your existing travel program from your
travellers’ perspective.
Does it meet their needs by giving them better prices than they
could find themselves?
Are you giving them the tools and information they need to make
the smartest buying decisions? If not, go out and get them.
Consult with travellers, get their feed back and suggest how you
can help them buy smarter, instead of “checking up” on them.
22. Future – Traveller Management
Apply consumer pricing psychology to corporate travel.
‘Behavioural economics’ is a new branch of study which
investigates how consumers make buying decisions:
• Decoy pricing
• Anchor prices
23. Future – Traveller Management
The business travellers of tomorrow, who grew up in the sharing
society dominated by Facebook, have already grown accustomed
to sharing more information about themselves in exchange for a
better, more personalized service experience.
This next-generation corporate traveller will demand a tailored
experience and capturing and capitalising on big data makes it
possible.
24. Future – Traveller Management
Mobile messages
Location-based services
Connect location-based information, personal
identification and context data
25. How has travel changed while you’ve been
in this business?
What are your experiences of traveller
management?
How do you manage the user experience in
your travel programmes?
Group Discussion Point
28. Future – Gamification
What is gamification?
The application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point
scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of
activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage
engagement with a product or service: “gamification is exciting
because it promises to make the hard stuff in life fun”
Oxford English Dictionary
29. What is your experience of gamification?
• Do you practice this?
• Do you know how to create such a program?
• Could your TMC’s incentive department help here?
• Could business tourism / Bleisure travel be the way to a
successful gamification programme?
• Do you think gamification can work across all traveller types
within you organisation?
• Do you think gamification can help you manage your travel
programme?
• What downsides do you foresee?
Group Discussion Point
31. Questions….
Business travel usually takes qualified professionals and managers
to destinations they have not selected themselves
(Opperman, University of Bournemouth, 2000).
Is it fair to say the above is generally no longer true?
