IN FOCUS
What’s all the fuss about?
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves: all the noise surrounding technological developments that are around the corner are actually here now and buyers have far less reason to be wary than they think, says Gillian Upton
analytics business, bd4travel, in their joint session at The Business Travel Conference, The Shape Of Things to Come. It was that there will be no technological surprises. “Everything that’s going to be developed in
T
the next five years is already out there now,” declared Owen-Jones. He advised buyers to “take a step back from the travel programme you’re running now and discover what’s out there on the fringe.” Delegates were asked to list what they thought was already out there on the periphery – the potential big game changers – and attendees came up with a surprisingly long-list of new technologies. Among them were self-drive cars, near field
technology, Google Glass, an app to direct you to your parked car, mobile payments, bitcoins, wearable technology, 3D printers, solar-powered mobile phones, car clubs and Reevoo social networks for intranets.
here was a clear message that came from Julian Mills, regional director of Traveldoo and Andy Owen-Jones, founder and CEO of real-time
Delegates were then asked to rate which
would make the biggest difference and why out of five items listed, namely: • Knowing where people are ALL the time • The internet of things • Prepaid travel expenses (mobile wallet, smart card, geolocation)
• Instant rule abuse detection • End-to-end instant journey planning Of those five, the majority of buyers said
end-to-end journey planning would make the biggest difference and one that they would like to achieve. That solution, however, requires an integrated expense management solution. And the fact that a huge number of buyers don’t have corporate cards means that end- to-end could be out of reach for some time. However, Mills notes that buyers are starting
to deploy end-to-end and in his ‘near future’ presentation he listed getting data into one place, HR solutions for managing employees who leave and join the travel programme, partner engagement (and ‘divorce’ from third party providers), P2P (purchase to pay) and Open Booking as current challenges for buyers.
“ The majority of buyers said end-to-end journey planning would
make the biggest difference to their travel programmes
” A few weeks earlier, panellists at the
“ Take a step back from the travel programme you’re running now and discover what’s already out there on the fringe ”
Institute of Travel & Meetings’ annual conference, Intelligent Futures, tested various travel-related gadgets already on the market. The panel included buyers Michael Hill of Coca-Cola and Gemma King of KMPG, and they selected six as potential game changers: • Word Lens, a translator App. This is an augmented reality translation application from Quest Visual (now owned by Google). It translates printed words in real-time with your smartphone’s built-in camera so it’s translation on the go. It does not require a connection to the internet and it can translate between English and Portuguese, German, Italian, French, Russian and Spanish. • Hailo, the Black Cab app for smartphones. Users can pay by card or cash and receive an email receipt instantly. • EasyJet app. Travellers can search for and book flights, check-in and download a mobile boarding pass for most of the airports the airline operates from. • Zipcar for business. The idea of wheels when you want them with low weekday driving rates and fuel and insurance included. There are 9,000 cars available across the UK and United States. • Livescribe. It’s a paper-based computer platform that includes a smartpen that changes handwriting to text so you can create reminders, appointments, contacts etc, share PDFs of those notes and create ‘pencasts’ that sync recorded audio to your handwriting. • Avis Mobile Wifi. This offers unlimited wireless internet access for laptops, smartphones, tablets and other wifi-enabled devices. It helps users avoid high roaming and hotel data charges or restrictive wifi hotspots. It seems that technophobia is unfounded in
a digital world as many are offering real benefits to both travellers and buyers alike.
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL MAGAZINE 25
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