Business Travel Executive, March 2019

SPECIAL REPORT Not a Moment to Waste 12Business Travel Executive MARCH 2019 The problem is both sets of data are reactive rather than proactive In response Grassanovits says We started monitoring a third data set travel waivers issued by airlines A lot of agencies just wait for the traveler to connect with them when they have a problem We automated this new data identifying all travelers and their agencies covered under waiver and send out alerts to help alleviate the effect of the disruption It offers them a chance to fly out ahead of the storm for instance Given the high volume of calls during disruptions everyone in the ecosystem from airline call centers to TMCs to travel managers gets bogged down However identifying this potential earlier has significantly sped up the process Grassanovits says Since going live some customers have been able to reduce the amount of time travelers wait to get assistance by over one third Agents and travelers no longer have to search for information they can automatically apply it she says Counting the Cost of Disruption These efficiencies will be more important in the future as passenger traffic is projected to double between now and 2035 Couple that with the trend in ever higher load factors over the last decade and what you have left with is an extraordinarily brittle situation Grassanovits says The next step in Flightglobals antidisruption platform is looking at historical data to predict problems to determine how disruptions have impacted individual travelers in the past This is especially significant as corporations shift focus toward assuring the wellbeing of their road warriors to avoid health problems and burnout Corporations need to know when travelers may be hitting a point when something is the last straw on the camels back This new data set reports how much disruption travelers have experienced which ones were the most impacted she explains When we did some of this analysis with our partner PredictX we analyzed a years worth of one corporations data and found they had almost 52 man years of delays Thats an astonishing 46000 hours Such a significant loss is not going unnoticed either by corporate travel programs or by carriers Airlines have begun putting performance guarantees in contracts Delta makes huge noise about that They are putting their money where their mouth is Grassanovits notes Now weve got insight that watches that While this technology to mitigate disruptions was initially rolled out as a CLevel perk its value was easy to prove and has expanded rapidly to all travelers Corporate buyers spend a lot of time negotiating the best deals but when something goes wrong everything goes out the window Grassanovits says This helps them understand the total cost of disruption and the traveler experience so it is top of mind Another app for both travelers and TMCs is Freebird which enables disrupted travelers to rebook on available flights with just three taps on a mobile phone Blending data science and customer service into a mobile product that works seamlessly with TMC partners and then taking good care of any disrupted travelers has resulted in very high Net Promotor Scores While there are a lots of flight status services Freebird is the only solution that actually uses all the data to proactively rebook travelers to get where they need to be CEO and founder Ethan Bernstein says It operates 24 7 with automated mobile rebooking and human support Travelers have their own rebooking options enabling them to jump to the front of the rebooking process without standing in line or waiting on hold The whole idea is to put travelers back in control of their flight experience As the numbers in commercial aviation continue to grow and airlines find reliability more elusive disruption management and recovery is now big business and getting out in front of a problem is the Holy Grail It all boils down to the fact the largest problem is the lack of communication and transparency says Grassanovits And what weve done is automate that communication BTE Airlines are being more proactive with travelers using their app to give real time data