Feature: Booking Tools ➔


later this year around mobile interactive itineraries enabling business travellers to select seats, make bookings and have a built-in tailor made company policy.


RAIL BOOKING TOOLS There is also likely to be further development around online rail booking which has really taken off in the past year. Online booking of rail has been seen as an easy win in terms of savings in recent months, driving corporates to put the spotlight on their rail spend. Evolvi, part of the Capita stable, will unveil


the latest version of its rail booking tool in February with enhancements around travel policy compliancy, procurement and supply of management information. Despite the downturn the company continues


to see expansion and is running ahead in transaction volumes compared to last year. “That’s encouraging and shows people are travelling. There is some evidence of a cabin shift mostly among the public sector and the overall growth continues to be underpinned by private sector clients,” says Jon Reeve, Evolvi's director of trade relations. In terms of recent developments, Reeve says


train operating companies have been far more innovative with fares to encourage migration from air travel which has forced the technology company to adapt its systems to incorporate the special deals and offers. In September HRG unveiled an online saving tool for rail travel alongside the release of its


latest version of HRG Online, enabling clients to view savings on ticket costs and better manage UK rail spend. The release came at the same time as figures from train operating companies showing their share of intercity routes had grown at the expense of the airlines. Reeve adds that there is also increased awareness from the SME market of the need to manage the corporate rail spend and the disparity between walk-up-fares and pre- purchased. “The key message for us is that travellers could go direct to a train site but they won’t have the tracking or expense management or cost attribution,” he says. Nathan Cousins, business development director at RailGo, a specialist rail booking system built on the Evolvi platform, says it is easier to engage companies about a standalone rail booking system with many corporates looking to unbundle their travel management to extract the best value. “People are looking at their overall costs and


what they are paying for and how that would be impacted if they were to hive out hotel spend to a hotel booking agent or rail spend to an online booking tool,” he says. Cousins adds that the conversation is around whether the additional service they get from a TMC is good value and whether they gain anything additional. “Some corporates are trying to buy smarter. TMCs can offer a far higher level of service


than we can, but corporates are asking if they need that level of service to just offer rail.” Like Evolvi, thetrainline is also experiencing a bigger drive towards managing rail spend with a distinct shift from offline to online bookings. Sales and distribution director Adrian Watts says the company is seeing volume increases from non-government clients who used to book when they turned up at stations or via call-centres, now turning to online booking. There is also increased take-up of the system via its deals with companies such as GetThere and KDS. Thetrainline recently introduced an updated version of its mobile application for smart phones, enabling travellers to book tickets as well as look up timetables and fares. According to Watts the next step is to make the


“There is also increased awareness of the need to manage rail spend and the disparity between walk- up-fares and pre-purchased”


app available in the corporate market place with a service initially for BlackBerrys. The app will have additional corporate functionality such as secure login and management information elements, while a future release will look at the possibility of payment via lodging cards. EC Harris has been using thetrainline’s online booking tool for six months and is pleased with the 99 per cent adoption rate it has achieved by enabling travellers to make their own bookings if they want to as well as providing expert centralised bookers for others. Kala Mandviwala, head of procurement at EC Harris, says: “The system has further enabled


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