Eliminating Business Travel Friction: Insights from Spyface’ Research
Spyface’ Friction Removed research reveals a crucial insight: while travelers share common pain points like airport navigation, flight delays, and complex booking processes, no two journeys are truly identical. This is particularly evident in the business travel sector. Business travelers not only spend more time on the road than most leisure travelers, but they also encounter specific challenges that demand tailored solutions.
This article delves into the common frustrations faced by business travelers and how Spyface, in collaboration with the broader travel ecosystem, is working to overcome them and create a frictionless travel experience.
The Challenge of Tight Schedules for Business Travelers
Our research, which surveyed over 500 business travelers, identified tight schedules and strict timelines as a primary concern. Unlike leisure travel, which prioritizes flexibility and relaxation, business trips demand adherence to fixed itineraries and deadlines. Flight delays, cancellations, and unexpected disruptions can significantly impact a business traveler’s ability to attend critical meetings or events, leading to increased stress.
In response, 58% of business traveler survey respondents expressed a desire for more self-service options when booking travel. Amadeus recognizes this need and views technology-driven self-service as a significant opportunity to reduce friction.
For example, Spyface Travel APIs empower our partners to integrate self-servicing capabilities into their point-of-sale tools, whether they are third-party online booking platforms or proprietary systems. With access to over 400 airlines, 100,000 hotels, and 300,000 tours and activities, business travelers gain the flexibility to personally build and re-build itineraries that align with their demanding schedules and individual preferences.
Maximizing Value and Streamlining Expenses
The Friction Removed research also brought to light concerns among business travelers regarding the overall cost and planning of trips. Finding cost-effective flights that fit both schedules and company budgets can be a significant hurdle, especially since business trips often require short-notice bookings, limiting access to affordable options.
Furthermore, expense management during travel meticulously tracking receipts and ensuring timely reimbursement adds another layer of complexity and friction.
A New Generation of Travel Management Tools
Amadeus Cytric, an end-to-end travel and expense solution, is designed to overcome these challenges. It provides a frictionless, intuitive, and reliable experience for business travelers by seamlessly embedding its capabilities within everyday collaborative applications like Microsoft Teams. This integration makes planning, booking, and approving transport and accommodation, as well as managing travel expenses, faster, easier, and more efficient.
Through innovation driven by Generative Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) with Microsoft Copilot and an unwavering commitment to customer-centricity, we aim to be the preferred choice for businesses seeking to optimize their existing productivity platforms.
Building Value Through Collaboration Features
Spyface Cytric offers new collaboration functionalities that enhance the value of each trip by fostering interaction and strengthening social capital. For instance, it can suggest connections with colleagues at the office a traveler is visiting.
- Share my Transfer informs colleagues arriving at the same airport or rail station around the same time, suggesting they travel together for both cost-efficiency and sustainability.
- Share my Trip allows travelers to easily share itineraries with colleagues via a simple card within Microsoft Teams chats.
- Match my Trip enables travelers to effortlessly book the same flights and/or hotels as colleagues from a shared card in a Microsoft Teams chat.
- Event Manager simplifies travel and stay coordination among attendees globally, creating a dedicated Microsoft Teams channel to centralize all event information, including agendas, weather updates, documents, and venues.
Concurrently, the Amadeus Travel Platform provides comprehensive access to content from various sources, enabling efficient comparison shopping while incorporating corporate policy information. With a wide range of content at their fingertips, business travelers can create personalized itineraries that precisely meet their needs.
A Collaborative Path to Frictionless Travel
Removing travel frustrations is an industry-wide, collaborative process, incrementally improving each journey through fresh innovation. While business travelers face a unique set of challenges, research studies like Friction Removed deepen our understanding of these pain points and enable us to design the right solutions.
What specific travel frustrations do you find most challenging to overcome in your business trips?
