While 92% of travel managers say they have already adopted online booking tools, there is a growing need among businesses to create a more efficient and streamlined booking process. According to “Booking Tools and Technologies: One Size Does Not Fit All”, a new global survey of corporate travel buyers from the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE), underwritten by American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), 80% of respondents say it’s important that all channels are integrated into one platform.
Eighty-one percent of respondents say they have a mandate in place requiring travellers to book travel through company tools and platforms, with 5% admitting adoption is currently lower than 10%. This indicates that, despite corporate policies, there are still real challenges and a need for ongoing education when it comes to user adoption.
Low rates of employee adoption may be due to a lack of internal education on how to use the tools. Less than half (47%) of respondents communicate regularly with employees about their booking tools. Perhaps even more surprisingly, 8 percent of travel managers surveyed say their organisation has never communicated with employees about booking tools – not even during the onboarding process.
As every business has different travel-related needs, 90% of travel managers say optimising their OBT platform for company policy and preferred options was moderately to extremely important.
“Travel managers should be wary of evolving traveller expectations. The booking experience needs to be highly flexible and should look and feel like it does when they book personal travel,” said Fitzgerald Draper, director of research with ACTE.
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