Business travel planning made easy

When it comes to business trips, planning can quickly become overly complex and time consuming. Air and rail travel plus managing transfers, rentals and bookings can get muddled up in a mess of decisions, which may also need to be adjusted to fit an ever-changing work schedule.

To help handle this task, solutions known as 'door-to-door' (in Europe, America and Australia) have emerged, which promise to make planning easier for travellers. These tools can put together itineraries combining different modes of transport such as planes, trains, buses, private shuttles, etc., and can even offer to book the whole journey door-to-door (hence the name) using multimodal transport (several modes of transport are suggested to get you to your destination) or mixed-mode transport (using a combination of several modes of transport to reach your destination), meaning you no longer have to carry out multiple searches on different websites. This is the dream, right?

Apart from the challenges of transport data (which itinerary best matches your profile, traffic, etc.), other issues come into play for business travel. Based on the most basic structural elements of the trip (date, meeting place and time), door-to-door planning has to also make a point of being able to save time for travellers when booking a trip, all the while applying their company's travel policy.
Business travellers no longer need to go through endless different bookings (plane, train, hotels, taxi, etc.) or to check the overall coherence of the trip in terms of date and times. Cost management is also a factor considered by these tools. A travel file is generated, which includes all direct costs that will be incurred, making it easier to process expense accounts based on this record.
Last but not least, these tools can also work in favour of the environment; being able to compare different modes of transport means being able to limit the impact that business trips have. And it can all be associated with internal policies.  

Door-to-door travel planning might not be perfect just yet, as it's still in the very early stages of development. However, in the not-too-distant future, travel assistants will aim to become a universal tool (most definitely for mobile phones) and will be seen as a ‘Swiss Army knife’ for every business traveller. This ingenious, pioneering technological product will be able to book trips, manage visas, check emails, take all costs into account, and more. In other words, it’ll be the perfect digital assistant.

And the solutions? These can now be found in the development of intelligent purchasing techniques and in the processing of big data, personal data and work-related data. Information about the traveller, their trips and their expectations is leading to more tailored solutions being offered, and to tools being developed that can interpret needs based on travellers’ expectations.
This is already the case for the Lola application, launched by the co-founder of Kayak. This app works by analysing the business traveller's likes and dislikes in order to fully personalise their business trip and offer them a tailor-made experience. But that's not all: Lola meets your every request round the clock — like a devoted concierge — with a private-messaging service. It also lets you review all your bookings in one place (in the app) at the touch of a button. So, it would seem that door-to-door travel planning is already here.