KNOWING YOUR OPTIONS

_{Editor's Letter}

When I began covering business travel in 2008, online booking tools weren’t exactly a new idea, but they weren’t a default option for every company either. There was still a lot of chatter about pushing travelers away from live agent bookings and onto digital platforms, mostly to save money. 

We were clawing our way out of the financial crash, and the focus on travel costs was ferocious. We compared agent-assisted booking fees to online booking fees. We talked about “touched” and “touchless” bookings and we talked about the concept of visual guilt. That was a big one—the idea that a traveler would see the prices of their different options side by side, and the ‘guilt’ associated with not taking the cheapest option would keep spending in check. 

We’ve realized since those early days of corporate online bookings there’s a lot of other important information that should be presented at the point of sale—and we are looking to our online booking tools to enable that information, present it to bookers in an elegant way and, when necessary, provide the stop signs, messaging and workflows to get them to the right choice quickly and painlessly. 

And also, if it’s not too much trouble, that needs to include comprehensive travel content, in a mobile experience on a tiny screen and delivered in a way that is personalized for the traveler. 

To be honest, that’s asking a lot. But in the past several years, online booking tool providers have innovated toward achieving those goals. They’ve activated new content sources, but also employed stated traveler preferences and machine learning to understand travel patterns and deliver tailored choices. Some have incorporated configurable messaging through the booking workflow, or incorporated new contextual data—recently, Covid-19-related information and sustainability data—to enable smarter bookings that support personal risk decisions and larger strategic goals. 

In this guide, BTN hopes to help buyers looking for a new online booking tool—or those potentially in the market for the first time—understand how booking tools are functioning today and how organizations, program administrators and travelers stand to gain from effective travel booking tools. 

Of course, the real question is which tool will best deliver to those needs. That answer will be different for each buyer using this guide. 

To kickstart the process, BTN has provided in this issue a sentiment survey about how travel managers feel about their current tools and what they look for in a booking tool provider. We’ve also compiled profiles of 15 major tools in the market now. We’ve asked suppliers themselves about their offerings and followed up on those statements with comments from current clients as well as from consultants who have broader insights into which tools are winning bids and which are best positioned to serve certain types of clients or specific regions. 

We learned a lot in the process and hope you can too.