INTEGRATING UBER Travel management companies (TMCs) are also keen to get involved: UK market leader Carlson Wagonlit Travel is pilot- ing the use of Uber through its CWT To Go itinerary-based app, while Expedia’s managed travel brand Egencia has also integrated Uber ride requests into its Trip Navigator app. John McCallion, CEO of technol- ogy specialist Groundscope, agrees that Uber’s emergence “has raised the profile of the ground transport sector and made it more fashionable”, as well as forcing long-established suppliers to “reassess how they need to interact with customers”. But he adds that Uber and its contem-


poraries cannot offer all the transport services that corporate clients require, such as providing a meet-and-greet chauffeur- style service at an airport. “Uber is a leisure service and does not


provide all the attributes corporate clients require. For this reason, it’s had less impact on the business market,” says McCallion. “It is an on-demand service and a busi- ness traveller being collected at 5am to go to the airport wants this all booked in advance rather than getting up at 4.30am and booking a car on Uber.” Hailo, which operates as an app for black cab drivers, has ambitions to become “Europe’s leading licensed taxi provider”


70 BBT JULY/AUGUST 2016


“Uber’s emergence has raised the profile of the ground transport sector and made it more fashionable”


and currently operates in the UK, Ireland and Spain. The company’s strategy is to offer a “transparent approach to pricing”, as well as addressing duty-of-care con- siderations that buyers might have about using less-regulated services. Andy Jones, Hailo’s UK general


manager, adds: “Our clients simply pay the taxi meter fare. We don’t charge for accounts, booking or transaction fees. We don’t ‘surge’ price and we don’t charge run-in costs – the cost of the journey to come and pick you up. “We often find employees are simply left to sort out their own arrangements with little or no travel policy framework in place or guidance from their company. Unsurprisingly, employees have taken to


adopt solutions that work in their private lives or simply hail cabs off the street. There is genuine and understandable concern among clients whether these solutions compromise their corporate duty-of-care towards their employees.”


FRAGMENTED NATURE As one UK-based travel buyer puts it, ground transport has always been “difficult to get a handle on” due to its fragmented nature, a multitude of suppliers and differ- ent payment methods – even with recent advances in technology, the “days of paper taxi receipts are still not over”. The fact that ground transport is often managed by a different department, outside of travel, can be another potential hurdle. As Nigel Turner, CWT’s senior director


of programme management, says: “Some companies have integrated their ground transport costs very successfully, but many have not been able yet to get their arms around the spend, requirements and controls in this area. For many compa- nies, ground transport is an unmanaged expenditure that could return significant savings, as well as improvement to safety and security risk.” UK private-hire firm Addison Lee has been working to improve its tech- nology – particularly the use of travel management software to provide the type


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