Finding the balance of tech and touch

Daniel Price CEO and founder of Jyrney

In 2015, several new, tech-enabled travel management companies (TMCs) launched into the business travel market.

TMCs operate as an outsourced travel team for businesses – think of them as travel agencies for companies. They provide various booking options for travellers to access air, rail and hotel suppliers including by phone, email and via online booking tools.

The new breed of travel companies, including Silicon Valley’s Trip Actions and Barcelona’s Travel Perk, were well-funded and promised highly technical solutions for business travellers. New booking channels, such as easyto-use mobile apps, and pre-pay cashless solutions were integrated into travellers’ trip planning along with customer service offered through online or mobile chat. Sound familiar?

Businesses that appoint travel management companies traditionally expect a high touch service for their travellers. Do your customers have questions about a trip? Call your agent. If travellers want to know the best hotel to stay near the conference, drop your travel consultant an email. What do you do if something goes wrong? Get in touch with customer services.

The promise of tech-driven TMCs was technology meant you didn’t need the high-touch support. Again, sound familiar?

Business travel, like private hire, is a purposeful business. It needs support for both operations and the traveller. As we know from private hire, difficulties don’t always lie in the logistics of dispatching vehicles or arranging schedules, but from the unpredictability of real-life human behaviour. The driver waiting at the wrong pick-up location; the customer coming out late for the arranged pick-up; or the failed collection of the CEO last thing on a Friday.

It came as little surprise when Trip Actions acquired a TMC, Reed and Mackay, that was renowned for its high-touch customer experience. Trip Actions could now offer a higher grade of service to complement their disruptive technology.

The parallels in business travel disruption are not too dissimilar

The parallels in business travel disruption are not too dissimilar from our own in private hire. Consider that in 2012 Uber entered the UK market, with the promise of advanced technology, but with little in the way of customer service to support the operations.

When packaged under a ‘For Business’ banner, Uber’s European head, Jamie Haywood, commented in an interview in this very magazine that business clients require “more customised cases that Uber is not very good at delivering”.

Uber’s response to the challenges a low-touch solution brings was the 2020 acquisition of Autocab, providing out-of-the-box access to its unique iGo network. A readymade network of operators to support the conversion of Uber’s low-touch offering to a higher-touch model. Uber’s introduction to the London market a decade ago sparked an advance in technology from the dispatch systems, which moved to offer app-based cloud systems, and aggregators that could offer operators access to new clients on a national or international level.

This new ‘high tech’ aggregated solution, combined with an operator’s high-touch customer service, gives private hire a distinct edge in the business market when compared to ride hailing companies’ “plain vanilla” offering.

Both business travel and private hire markets have been on a similar journey, where they start with a low-tech, high-touch solution, before market disruptors enter and flip the model to high-tech, low-touch.

This challenge encouraged the incumbents to improve their technology as the disruptors now look for ways to improve service. While the rival business camps, incumbents and disruptors, may have approached their model evolution from opposite sides, both industries seem poised to deliver a high-tech, high-touch model to their customers. The question really is; do our passengers and travellers deserve any less?

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

Finding the balance of tech and touch