KDS recently released a White Paper on the topic of online booking in today's environment.
Corporate self-booking tools are now 20 years old. And although there have been numerous enhancements and improvements since then, today's tools have effectively the same format and functionality as when they were launched. However, travellers now inhabit a different world. Technology has become part of everyday life and this is affecting users' behaviour – and their expectations.
There is a good case for arguing that corporate behaviour should be dictated by the employer as part of the employee-employer contract and that the individual is free to make behavioural choices only during non-business hours.
However, work is no longer only within a carefully defined silo and undertaken only within the place of employment. It is also true that we don't abandon our leisure-time characters and expectations when we go to work. Leisure and business behaviour are converging – bleisure, according to some – and although the employer makes the rules, management should also be cognisant of employees' expectations in the changing world of work.
Corporate self-booking tools still resemble and present content in the same way as those of the travel trade whereas travellers are increasingly accustomed to leisure and suppliers' own sites which are much more user friendly. As a consequence, corporate booking tools are looking less and less fit for purpose.
The KDS white paper proffers two alternative ways forward –open booking (Travel Management 2.0) or moving from existing self-booking tools to so-called 'door-to-door' booking tools (editor's note: KDS sells such a tool). Rather than offering suitable transport content in response to a trip request, these actually establish where the executive is travelling from and to and when they need to arrive and then offer a solution.
KDS is at pains to stress that open booking is not unmanaged and that there are a number of effective ways in which the necessary data from spend to traveller location can be gathered from multiple booking channels. Yet it argues, not surprisingly, that door-to-door tools are even more preferable because travel management is about more than data. The new tools are potentially attractive to travel managers because they are configured to encourage confirming every element of the trip rather than just the air segment at the time of booking, facilitate expense reporting and are user-friendly in terms or appearance and functionality as well as being mobile compatible.
But there is an elephant in the room which is absent from KDS's paper, namely predictive data. Both today's tools and the two booking options for the future will yield transactional data but is that enough? Transactional data reports activity after the money's been spent; it is not an accurate predictor of future travel patterns, profiles or spend. Wider data capture is needed to predict future purchasing patterns and requirements.
Transactional data is necessary. It is not sufficient.