Business Travel Executive, February 2019

TECH FILES Business Travel Executive FEBRUARY 2019 32 All Our Tomorrows Time keeps on slippin into the future and travel technology is slippin along for the ride As the calendar turned its pages to January 1 we entered the last year of the second decade of the 21st century Remember Y2K Its hard to believe that nearly 20 years have passed since that non event Yet we and our technology survived and continue to thrive producing a seemingly never ending parade of innovation For road warriors its the golden age of technology Smarter devices and faster connections have opened doors and knocked down silos for travelers making all manner of experiences services and products available at their thumbtips In fact according to the second annual State of Business Travel Survey from National Car Rental 93 percent of frequent business travelers prefer travel brands whose technology offerings make their travel experience better or easier or preferably both So as the third decade of the Digital Century looms on the horizon now is as good a time as any to take stock of the state of the technological art in travel to see where its brought us and to get a glimpse of where it might be taking us In the hotel space the buzz is all about targeted personalization according to the latest Starfleet Research study involving more than 450 hotel executives managers and staff The research found that 89 percent of hoteliers agree or strongly agree that targeted personalization i e presenting guests with highly relevant messages offers and services at the right time is crucial to improving the guest experience and enhancing guest satisfaction loyalty and favorable brand advocacy And technology is the key to understanding guests and their preferences on an individual basis Because its all about data capturing analyzing and tapping into the mountain of guest profile information including thousands of data points gathered about each guests activities from hotel booking to hotel checkout According to the study gleaning meaningful actionable data from such an avalanche of information can only be accomplished with todays technological capabilities Beyond data management and analysis the next wave of guest experience management for hoteliers is artificial intelligence The Starfleet Research report reveals that while its still early in the game for this newest entrant in the technology sweepstakes AI enabled devices are already proving invaluable particularly in the area of hotel guest services These devices are shortening guest wait times by providing faster response times to guest inquiries and requests and by fielding a number of inquiries simultaneously Of course faster service response and faster problem resolution are top drivers of overall guest satisfaction Face Facts At the airport 2019 is likely to be a critical year for biometric facilitation with the technology reaching a tipping point for passenger acceptance and operator commitment according to Marriott Data Breach Total Tops 380 Million Guests Marriott has announced that the biggest hacking of personal information in history was not quite as big as first feared The company said that teams of forensic and data analysts have identified approximately 383 million records as the upper limit for the total number of guest reservations records in the Starwood reservations system lost in the data breach announced in November So far there are no known cases in which stolen passport or credit card information was found in fraudulent transactions However for the first time Marriott conceded that its Starwood hotel unit did not encrypt the passport numbers for roughly 5 million guests The company said about 86 million credit and debit cards were involved in the incident but those were all encrypted and all but 354000 cards had expired by September 2018 when the hacking which went on for years was discovered Serko Acquires InterplX Travel and expense management company Serko has acquired InterplX Inc a provider of software as service SaaS expense management solutions in the US InterplX solutions include cloudbased expense reporting expense auditing services and payment processing It was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Minneapolis Darrin Grafton CEO of Serko said the investment is an important part of Serkos global growth strategy and would extend its end to end travel and expense offering InterplX founder Chuck Buckner and the existing management team will continue head up the company reporting to Serkos vice president of North America Tony DAstolfo