Finding our place in the business travel world

BUSINESS TRAVEL IS COMING BACK. IT’S different – and it might just be better. While lockdowns, travel restrictions and work from home guidance have passed, and consumer travel demand has returned, business travel still lags behind.

Business trips are often booked through Travel Management Companies, appointed by businesses with large numbers of travellers, to book and manage their travel. The industry has seen huge reductions in the number of travellers booking both domestic and international travel, and with rail still hovering at around 70% of pre-pandemic numbers it appears that domestic travel is going to take some time to recover.

Since the beginning of the year we have seen light at the end of the tunnel as business travellers return. In recent weeks, many travel companies have reported experiencing their highest number of bookings since the start of the pandemic.

In the UK alone, business travel management is a multi-billion pound market. However, historically, ground transport sits outside the Travel Management Company relationship. Transfers are either booked independently by the traveller, or require the TMC to use several different booking tools to navigate the fragmented market.

This process results in less than 3% of their transactions coming from taxi, private hire or chauffeur trips.

With business travel at 50% of pre pandemic volumes, TMCs are looking to other elements of travel to increase the products they can sell to their customers.

After 20 years of selling ground transport into TMCs I have identified that there are three elements needed for a TMC to run an effective ground transport programme:

A single point of integration to access multiple fleets and vehicle options

work with a business that has deep experience in managing the complexities of a multi-operator network

The usual high standard of service offered by private hire operators. The last decade has seen huge advances in ground transport technology, facilitating smoother booking processes and enabling multiple fleets to be bookable on a single platform. This sets the industry up perfectly to partner with travel companies to deliver an integrated and connected service to their travellers.

With traveller confidence still recovering in air and rail, and work patterns perhaps changed forever, I expect shorter, regional trips to replace some longer air or rail business travel journeys.

Employees making trips to the office less often leaves a gap to offer different transport options to the work from home travellers, which could be an entirely new business travel market.

Working with aggregators will give operators the ability to take work from these travel companies, as the aggregator integrates their technology with the travel industry clients. These jobs are often higher mileage, outside of peak hours and sent directly via dispatch integration.

The changing dynamics in business travel industry and the desire for the TMC to offer first- and last-mile trips as part of the booking process, presents an opportunity for the private hire industry. An opportunity to access a business travel market that now seeks out new services. An opportunity to partner with new aggregator technologies that allow deeper integrations into the passengers booking flow.

And above all, an opportunity for taxi and private hire to take its rightful place alongside air, rail and car hire within business travel.

Daniel Price is CEO and founder of Jyrney. Daniel.price@jyrney.com — www.jyrney.com