It’s been about a month since the COVID-19 pandemic took the western world by storm, impacting travel in ways the modern travel industry had never seen. Companies have, for the most part, halted their business travel program and a majority of the country is under some version of a safer-at-home order. People are settling into a new work-life rhythm as they “patiently” wait for the COVID-19 pandemic to die down. Everyone across almost all disciplines remains confident this WILL come to an end, but what we’re all still trying to work through is when that is and what the world will look like when it does.
So then, what does business travel look like in a post-COVID-19 world? Different but the same. Everyone championing a travel program will now be preparing for the “what if something like this happens again” instead of the more leisurely “what if” they were acknowledging pre-2020. We’ll all be concentrated on recovering as businesses and as travel programs.
Understanding unused tickets and how to manage and apply their value will be paramount. Pinpointing small travel-policy changes that can make a big difference on your bottom line will become doubly necessary. Duty of Care will be on the forefront of everyone’s minds.
As many discovered the hard way last month, cancelling, rescheduling, tracking waivers, and locating travelers during a crisis is incredibly challenging, especially when your program isn’t built to support them in scale. Processes and policies that once served daily management needs displayed their weaknesses as industry-wide bans and restrictions halted non-essential travel in an instant and the resulting tasks came in giant waves over the course of just days.
Budgeting. Tracking. Agility. Strategy. Support. Now is the time to build the travel program you wish you’d had on March 1, 2020.
We’re all adapting the way we manage travel to better fit the new normal. It’s not going to be an easy task, especially in the beginning. However, with the help of a travel management company like Gant, preparing your travel program for whatever comes next is a lot easier than trying to go at it alone.
Waiver Support and Unused Ticket Management
While airlines have decided to waive their change fees due to COVID-19, understanding the details of an airline waiver can be time-consuming and complicated. Every airline has their own process, fees, reasons, codes, etc. When you add to it the fact that waivers are being updated almost daily right now, tracking them down and making sure you know which tickets have applicable waivers, which waiver is applicable, which applicable waiver is the best, and how to make sure it gets applied at booking, it gets to be a lot. Especially since there’s a chance you have close to 10x your usual number of cancelled tickets to research.
With the abundance of unused tickets most companies have right now, it’s easy to see just how important the proper management of your unused ticket vouchers, existing program assets if you will, could be in saving your organization time and money when your team begins travelling again.
It’s why having a travel management company that can help you eliminate the stress that comes along with researching an airline waiver and applying unused tickets is so important. At Gant, we offer simple, automated solutions to help you track and apply waivers as well as get full value utilization of your unused ticket vouchers.
Our Perfect Waiver interacts with airline information in real-time to identify and document PNRs that may qualify for the provisions outlined in the waiver information. The program tracks any waiver issued by United, Delta, American, and Alaskan Airlines flights. Since COVID-19, our development team has been working hard to build out additional automation in the face of the waiver influx. We’re even able to resend unused tickets back through the system when waiver updates are made to ensure we’re attaching the newest, best waiver available for that ticket.
In addition to our waiver application process, we also streamline the unused ticket voucher process with our Ticket Retriever service. This four-tiered process effectively applies value from unused tickets that might have gone untracked and unused by offering increased visibility and tracking for both champions and travelers as well automatic application for bookings on a matching airline. Through our client portal, the Gant Gateway, admins can even access a detailed list of all available, expired, and used vouchers within their organization and reassign unused tickets to other employees when needed.
Travel Reporting
Travel managers need to know what’s going on in their programs. Be it where their travelers are, how last-minute they’re waiting to book their trips, or who’s been booking first-class when they shouldn’t, keeping tabs on travel spend and behaviors is what allows our champions to quickly pivot or alter their programs and policies should the need arise.
Real-time reporting on an easy-to-use platform allows travel champions to get a comprehensive look at company travel spend. Travel champions can construct a customizable homepage with snapshots of data using any of our 700+ reports, graphs, and charts. The data café also allows users to search for any transaction in your database individually by traveler or reservation number. In addition to all the self-service reporting, Gant currently offers biannual business reviews to examine program analytics and help determine different ways the organization could increase their travel ROI based on traveler booking behaviors. Using the reporting and analytics provided, our account managers can also help you negotiate, renegotiate, or renew airline and hotel contracts.
Since COVID-19 we’ve beefed up our tracking of cancellations, refunds, and exchanges. We’ve extended our Travelers on the Road platform to include 30-day geo-mapped views of all air reservations and built it to recognize a cancelled trip versus an active trip. It gives our champions an immediate view of where their travelers have been, where they are now if actively travelling, and where they are booked to go in the near future. We’ve even built out a new dashboard with a snapshot-look at program statistics vital to the current pandemic, like how many tickets have been cancelled, how many active reservations remain, how long our hold time is, and how long the current wait is for an agent to call a traveler back.
We’re almost finished taking our newly defined statistics and analytics and using it to revamp our entire reporting arsenal to now include rolling-12 business reviews published to our client portal every quarter, a real-time dashboard to view YTD travel program stats at a glance, and an upgraded reporting option with full drill-down capabilities that can offer global (multi-GDS capabilities), regional, and departmental analysis as well as enabling champions to pinpoint booking behaviors down to the traveler level.
Customer Service
This should be the no-brainer. Great customer service has a way of making bad situations less bad. But we’re not just talking about avoiding lackluster customer service here, we’re also talking about making sure there’s someone there to help you. Period.
The right travel management company can improve the travel experience for both travelers and travel champions. Whether there’s a snowstorm, hurricane, or global health pandemic, if the COVID-19 crisis has reminded us of anything about travel, it’s how stressful it is when something goes wrong with your plans and its completely out of your control.
At Gant Travel, our travelers have access to our full-service support team 24/7 because we know a flight delay or travel issue can occur at any time of the day. Plus, there’s no additional surcharge for travelers with existing reservations calling in with questions or modifications to their trip. We don’t charge just to cancel a trip, either.
Throughout the initial days of pandemic-induced cancellations, some airlines and travel companies (we won’t name names) had hold-times of over six hours. Some would only speak to those with reservations less than one day out. Some stopped taking calls altogether. But Gant’s average hold-time has remained under two minutes and our agents spent an average of over fifteen minutes helping each traveler. Our commitment to customer service doesn’t change, regardless of the circumstances.
For travelers that need a more tailored experience, Gant offers membership to our VIP Services. The experienced team is devoted to providing first-class support, anticipating unspoken needs and providing a personalized travel experience. VIP members are proactively contacted by an agent when there is any disruption to their trips, such as delays, cancellations, or reschedules.
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COVID-19 prompted all of us to remember that, while having a well-managed and easily adapted travel program is important every day, it’s crucial for navigating times of uncertainty. A great travel management company can help you build one – and maintain it. Gant Travel can help you adapt with our suite of innovative, travel-centric services and unwavering customer support.
Now is the time to build the travel program you wished you’d had when this all started, so you can be prepared for whatever comes next.
When you’re ready to start defining your post-COVID travel program, we’re here to help.
