Over the past 18 months, the global business travel sector came to a literal standstill. However, the industry has rapidly adapted in the second year of the ongoing pandemic getting ready for travelers to get back on the road.
With the pandemic has come a new world of travel to which corporations and travelers need to adapt. New technologies need to be embraced to minimize roadblocks on the journey, and at the same time, the demand for control and transparency across all parts of the journey has increased. These are some of the findings highlighted in the three global traveler surveys commissioned by Amadeus over the last 12 months. The purpose? To best understand traveler sentiment during this turbulent and unpredictable time.
Thelatest travelerresearch focusesaroundattitudesin travel, highlightingconcernsandsentiment towards travel health data, openness to technology, and sustainable travel. The survey revealed that business travelers are willing to embrace technology to have a more enjoyable travel journey. 98% of business travelers say that technology will increase their confidence to travel. The survey also reveals that one of the top five technologies that would increase confidence to travel in the next 12 months is ‘Contactless Payments’ cited by 41% of respondents. 42% of business travelers said mobile applications that provide on-trip notifications and alerts would increase their confidence to travel, and 39% said mobile boarding would do the same. Moreover, technology and innovation will be key for businesses travel and expense, I believe technology can play a transformational role.
For decades, the traditional pay, expense, reclaim process has meant travel expenses have been laborious and inefficient for businesses and travelers alike. A revolution in the way travel expenses is managed is long-overdue. Right now, only a small percentage of enterprises have an end-to-end cloud-based travel and expense management system in place. But this will change, as corporations realize it is time to digitally transform legacy travel and expense technologies to embrace new technologies, for example machine learning can open new doors to help corporations audit and keep track of business travel value. And in the future, travelers will demand agility and efficiency. Expense management is ripe for digital transformation and needs to be seen in terms of efficiency rather than cost reduction. Removing manual processes is the beginning; digitization affords new efficiency and better ways of working.
Additionally, as people are more wary about social distancing and physical interaction, a touchless on-trip payments experience facilitated by virtual card technology provides a safer way to make and reconcile corporate travel payments and expenses. For business travelers, mobile payment technology can revolutionize the way payments on-trip are made, imagine not having to fund travel expenses from your own pocket because your company has taken the step towards digital payments on corporate travelers’ mobile devices. For corporations, it enables better spend management and better efficiency with full automation and reporting, and increased usage of the card program to implement their payment strategies with suppliers.
Let’s look at this in real life. A traveler gets into a taxi to get to the airport for their next work trip. When they arrive, they pay with their mobile phone, directly from the company bank account, with real-time data and their purchase is conveyed automatically to the financial system of the corporation. There is no worry about keeping track of receipts and logging them into an excel spreadsheet when the traveler gets home. For corporation accounting teams, the reconciliation is automatically done with reduction of frauds thanks to spend limits and controls on the virtual cards
This is the vision Amadeus has for a true end-to-end Travel & Payment & Expense experience.
Configuring technology to simplify the payment and expense process for both travelers and finance teams can reduce costs, deliver simplicity, and keep travelers in policy so that when business travel volumes return corporations are best able to capitalize. At Amadeus, our Cytric Travel & Expense tool helps travelers easily comply with both corporate and country expense policies. By having one single tool, bookings, captured receipts, electronic invoices, and payment data are immediately available in the expense portal. Allowances and per diems are deducted from the traveler’s booking data. Even before your travelers return from their trip, expenses are ready to be approved.
Corporations can also set up trip and expense approval flows, validation rules, audit trails, notifications, and reminders for all participants in the end-to-end process. Once a change in the travel or expense policies is decided, travel managers can implement and deploy the new strategy and settings quickly and easily. Companies with multiple sites can easily change the policy in one place, and it will be replicated for all employees across the world.
This easy set up means corporations can free up finance teams from manual, low-value tasks all whilst making for happier travelers!
This is the second in a series of blogs, where we have outlined some of the innovative solutions we are providing at Amadeus in response to business traveler needs.
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