RAIL BY ROB GILL
ENSURING DUTY-OF-CARE FOR EMPLOYEES when they are travelling overseas has been one of the hot topics in corporate travel management in recent years. But how does this apply to the less high-profile arena of travel within the UK, and particularly the use of trains?
Knowing where your travellers are located is becoming increasingly important in the event of something going wrong or there is a major incident. This has led to the launch of new products, such as Concur’s Risk Messaging service and other security platforms.
This is not just a priority for interna- tional travel. Many companies have also tightened their policies to include UK domestic trips, particularly for rail journeys. However, this is proving a challenge to the travel management industry, given that many business travellers buy their tickets at the station or use consumer-facing apps and websites, instead of a preferred booking channel.
Thetrainline.com, which offers corporate booking services through travel manage- ment companies (TMCs) and direct to clients, says it has seen more demand from companies to have the ability to track employees using the British rail network. “We have long known that travel man- agers look to track employees travelling by air and overseas, and increasingly those travel managers wish to do the same for rail,” says Clare Morrissey, head of account management for
Thetrainline.com. Click Travel has also noticed that clients
have taken a stricter tone with travellers for all forms of travel, including domestic rail. Managing director Simon McLean says: “We have clients today who heavily promote to staff that they are not covered by the company’s insurance and repatria- tion arrangements if they book outside the preferred corporate booking channel.” The emergence of booking tools, such as those offered by the
Thetrainline.com and Evolvi Rail Systems, which works through TMCs, have helped to improve compliance and save money for companies on ticket
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
Many companies have also tightened their policies to include UK domestic trips, particularly for rail journeys
prices. But how good are they at tracking train travellers and is there any way for data from bookings made outside these channels to be picked up and fed into management information (MI) systems?
UNDERESTIMATING RISK Capturing data from rail journeys raises several challenges for technology com- panies, according to Jon Richardson, risk management specialist at Concur. “First, because of the issues with station codes – these are not universally unique and sometimes conflict with each other, or with airport codes,” he says. “Second, because of the nature of how they are booked, with the vast majority of rail tickets purchased minutes before travel. “Domestic travel is perceived as low risk,
therefore there isn’t the same emphasis on it by organisations. However, when faced with a major incident, security manag- ers will still need to understand who is impacted by the event.” The practicalities of train travel within the UK also means that while you may know that a certain employee or group has booked a particular rail journey, it is difficult to confirm whether they travelled on that train. Jon Reeve, trade relations director at
Evolvi, says: “Rail does not require the same check-in scrutiny as for, say, air travel – unless it’s for European train travel. But it can provide important affirmation of general travel timelines and intentions.
“For example, our Evolving system can quickly provide, subject to data compli- ance, information linked to the travel intentions of individuals and groups of people on specific rail routes on particular days. Although it cannot, in real-time, confirm absolutely whether a specific person is travelling on any given train.”
Thetrainline.com’s Morrissey agrees that MI on train bookings currently only shows “planned travel” and they have only been able to supply data feeds of travellers who are “likely” to have been affected by an incident rather than “live” information. “Presently, we are only able to provide planned travel information but with the developments in ticketing technology, this is a changing and an evolving landscape,” she says. Click Travel’s McLean agrees that col-
lecting data from rail bookings can be used to track travellers’ planned trips. “This generally involves monitoring rail journeys so we know the location of the calling points of a journey, so that we can pinpoint when and where travellers are based on their itinerary data,” he says.
BARCODE BENEFITS But what about the greater use of tickets with barcodes that can be scanned at station barriers – will this ultimately act as a solution for tracking travellers?
Thetrainline.com’s Morrissey says
barcodes will help: “We have built the systems and process architecture that gives a very granular view of the ticket purchase and activation process, and can relate this to barcode inspection records from onboard scanners and gatelines. It would be possible to give very detailed MI about travel and use patterns, if that were desired. Going forward this will encompass traveller data while on the move, as well as planned journeys.” The advancement of technology used in
rail booking platforms and a wider range of ticketing options should help to increase the use of corporate booking tools, accord- ing to Amadeus, which has been working on a major rail project to create something
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