BCD Travel has introduced a guest travel management tool for customers worldwide, the travel management company announced at the GBTA Convention in Dallas today (13 August).
BCD
Invite enables travel managers and arrangers to invite travellers without
travel programme profiles into the BCD platform to book trips within
their company's policy.
Travel managers can create temporary profiles,
track booking status and keep up with guest travellers throughout
their trip. Customers can also request BCD calls individuals to take care of their travel requirements.
"Non-employee travel was growing even before the pandemic," said Yannis Karmis, BCD's SVP of product planning and development, who cited job applicants, contractors, patient travel and production crews as such cases. "Coming out of the pandemic we've seen that non-employee travel has grown substantially."
Most BCD customers manage "a
significant volume" of travellers without profiles, especially in the media
and entertainment and life sciences verticals. "It's a growing concern for a lot of our clients – up to 10 per cent [of their travel needs] for some businesses," said Karmis.
A future feature
of BCD Invite will enable arrangers "to invite both profiled and
unprofiled meeting attendees to a specific event with custom booking
parameters," said Karmis. "This will vastly simplify
group travel management for organisations."