- Despite traveler interest, most companies do not require or recommend travel apps leaving travelers to figure it out themselves. In North America, only 18 percent of travelers say their organization “has specific apps they require for business travel” while 47 percent say their “organization does not recommend any travel apps.”
- The most common reasons sighted for using a travel app are flight check-in or flight status, generating an airline boarding pass, and booking hotels and flights.
- Approximately 24 percent of business travelers in North America use apps to request an Uber, Lyft, or taxi.
- Nearly 60 percent of North American business travelers are likely or very likely to use alternative forms of payment, including virtual payments and e-wallet, if they had the option within the travel program.
Press Release
A single place for all your trips: Sabre redefines business travel with one mobile empowered platform that manages the whole trip
The Traveler Experience Platform integrates a suite of travel technology products in a consumer-grade mobile experience delivering self-service in-transit travel bookings, itinerary management, payments, expense integration, and safety capabilities to the connected business traveler
SOUTHLAKE, Texas – Oct 3, 2016 – Forty-seven years after man first landed on the moon, there is finally a single mobile technology platform that allows space travelers and business travelers alike to self-manage in-transit booking, payments, expense reporting, safety and security matters, with the launch of the new Traveler Experience platform.
While the majority of business travelers want to manage their trips using technology, today they must rely on several different mobile apps to navigate the whole journey. According to a recent survey, The Digital Business Traveler, published by Sabre Corporation and the GBTA Foundation, 77 percent of business travelers in North America prefer using self-service technology to manage their travel but on average they use nine different apps to manage their business travel with the most popular apps being airline, hotel, booking, car and restaurant apps.
To address this disconnect, Sabre (NASDAQ: SABR) unveiled today its new Traveler Experience Platform at its annual Connect corporate travel conference in Dallas. The Traveler Experience Platform brings together the critical aspects of travel management into a single mobile app that will manage the whole trip for business travelers. The Platform combines the online booking capabilities of GetThere for air and hotel, the itinerary management and messaging features of TripCase and the e-payment solutions of Sabre Virtual Payments. Sabre has also introduced a travel risk management solution to the platform, SafePoint, which helps travelers to check-in with their employer via a GPS location and request assistance if an emergency arises.
“Travel is a strategic investment for corporations that can bring significant returns which is why we built a platform that provides scalable innovation to drive two key objectives: experience and efficiency. In the past you had to give up one to have the other. With this scalable platform, you basically have it all,” said Florian Tinnus, vice president of Traveler Experience at Sabre. “With personalization becoming an expectation for travelers, and mobile as an enabler of a true personalized experience, the future of travel is in the collaboration and execution of the traveler’s experience with a corporation’s travel program. And with scalability and flexibility as the foundation of this platform, we’re not only meeting the needs of today’s complex corporate travel programs, but we’re continuously evolving with tomorrows.”
In all, the Traveler Experience Platform helps solve some of the biggest challenges facing business travel programs: corporate travel managers searching for a flexible platform, travelers looking for a seamless experience and corporations striving for a positive return on investment. Available to travelers through their employer’s travel program, the platform seamlessly integrates multiple products and solutions, providing corporations a single mobile application for their travelers and freedom-of-choice in expense integration. Within the platform, corporate policies are automatically adhered to when business travelers book or rebook trips, expenses are automatically captured and stored and a detailed expense report is auto-filed when the trip is complete, all from the traveler’s mobile device.
The Digital Traveler Survey also found that:
