The business travel branch of the Expedia group is leveraging technology investments from the world’s largest travel company to help create the business travel of the future.
LONDON, PARIS and MUNICH, Feb. 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Today at the Business Travel Show in London Egencia, the corporate travel company of the Expedia group (NASDAQ: EXPE), launches its exclusive mobile-only hotel discounts for the Egencia® TripNavigator mobile app and the most recent enhancements to its integrated online booking and customer service model.
Consumer-inspired mobile technology and offers
During his keynote speech at the Business Travel Show today, Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of the Expedia group explained how the future landscape of business travel will be driven by the demand for consumer-inspired, integrated booking platforms. With an intuitive, next-generation interface, the recently launched Egencia® TripNavigator incorporates technology from the Expedia brand’s acquisition of Mobiata®, a creator of best-selling mobile travel apps. Egencia is building on this platform by offering ‘mobile only’ hotel discounts to its customers. The service will offer deep discounts to approximately 7,200 hotel properties. This initiative will appeal to travellers looking for best value last-minute hotel bookings and help companies drive down the cost of late reservations.
“When our travellers change their itineraries on-the-go, TripNavigator helps us keep track. We always know where they are and they always know that they are booking hotels in policy,” says Travel Manager, Jerome Bonnepart at Arkema, a France-based chemical company with operations around the world. “We are also looking forward to using the application’s mobile only deals, for further savings on our hotel spend.”
Rapid development cycle for next-generation booking and customer services
“Our strategy is to offer our customers a combination of global technology and local service,” says Christophe Peymirat, Senior Vice President, Egencia EMEA. “We leverage Expedia technology and insights to more quickly build the best user experience across all devices. Developing our own technology also helps us to deliver the high level of customer service that business travelers and arrangers demand.”
With its customer service and technology platforms developed under one roof, Egencia is constantly bringing new innovation to the market. With Agile development methods, the company was able to increase its ability to introduce new core functionality from 4 to 24 releases a year. This nimble process allows the company to better incorporate customer feedback into the product design. Over the last 18 months, Egencia has enhanced its entire product offering, including 3-step booking with a consumer-style interface for air, hotel and UK rail reservations. Today, Egencia is officially launching a new best-in-class car booking experience, the latest addition to the company’s proprietary technology offering.
Egencia’s booking system is fully integrated across devices, uploading all reservations automatically into TripNavigator as soon as online bookings are complete and downloading all mobile hotel reservations into the web-based platform. Travellers immediately have access to step-by-step directions for all stages of travel and alerts for changes in itinerary, scheduling or next steps, such as filling the car with petrol before returning it to the hire agency.
You can meet with Egencia at stand 1130 during BTS, test this stunning new app and get a glimpse of the new car platform’s design and features.
