On July 17 last year, TAM Airlines flight 3054 crashed into the runway at Sao Paulo, Brazil, killing 199 people. Thanks to a new traveller tracking and alert software, Canada's Vision 2000 Travel Group was almost instantly able to determine that none of its customers were aboard.
And earlier this year, when an Air Canada flight from Victoria to Toronto had to make an emergency landing in Calgary after suddenly plunging about 3,000 metres, injuring several passengers, the new software, the Sabre Traveler Security and Data Suite, sprang into action again.
"This time we did indeed have one client on board," says Brian Robertson, chief operating officer of Toronto-based Vision 2000. "The software notified us and automatically generated an e-mail to the client's office."
In addition to keeping tabs on flight manifests, the Sabre travel software, produced by Texas-based Sabre Holdings, can also help enforce corporate travel policies. It's just one example of the kinds of tracking and oversight software making its way into the business travel market.
Another new product, which will be launched at the end of this month, is Pre-Trip Auditor from American Express Canada. Pre-Trip Auditor acts as a kind of online police officer to ensure that its clients' employees adhere strictly to corporate policy when booking flights, hotels and car rentals. If they do not, they receive an automatic e-mail pointing out their error.
The overall goal, experts say, is to provide end-to-end automated solutions that not only manage business travel but also deliver significant cost, security and time-saving benefits to both business customers and travel agencies alike.
A 2008 survey by the National Business Travel Association of Canada (www.nbtacanada.org) suggests that new versions of tracking and policy-enforcement software are indeed big business.
The survey found that 47 per cent of respondents had recently updated their policies governing business travel and 29 per cent plan to do so in the near future. As well, 38 per cent of the companies recently acquired software tools to enforce those policies, and 29 per cent plan to do so later this year.
"Travel policies minimize costs by steering bookings to preferred vendors and maximizing the value of those agreements," the survey notes. "Travel policies are also central to risk management, ensuring that a company can quickly locate travellers in a time of crisis and can proactively evaluate any risks associated with travel."
"Business travel agencies have all kinds of data on file about their clients; what we are doing now is helping them make best use of it," says James McNair, vice-president and general manager at Sabre for Canada and the western United States.
Keeping travel management software up-to-date is vital to maintaining a competitive edge, says Vision 2000's Mr. Robertson. His company bills itself as the largest Canadian-owned business travel agency, with 400 employees in 18 offices.
Its focus is on mid-market companies that spend anywhere from $500,000 to $15-million a year on corporate travel. This year, he expects revenue to grow by 15 per cent.
"We felt we needed the Sabre suite to maintain that competitive edge," Mr. Robertson says. "Given the rise in international unrest and the unusual series of natural disasters, corporations are increasingly concerned about security for their road warriors."
What sets the new Sabre product apart from others is both its personalized response capability and its relatively low cost, says Jessica Thorud, direct of product marketing at Sabre.
While other security products such as Travel Alert from Amex deliver regular e-mail messages to customers about local situations that might affect travellers, the Sabre suite can immediately notify a company if its employee fails to make a plane connection, pick up a rental car or check into a hotel.
It also automatically sends e-mails if troubles develop with an airplane or if there is a natural disaster or civil unrest at the traveller's destination.
"It won immediate acceptance when we introduced the beta version last fall," says Mr. McNair, because recent terrorist incidents in cities such as London had helped create demand. "Users were immediately able to check on the status of their employees in London."
Sabre has 83 customers, including four in Canada, using the new product. Cost varies from $500 a year for a single user to more than $6,000 for multiple users. The price also covers the data module, which helps both travel agencies and corporate users manage their businesses, says Ms. Thorud.
Vision 2000's Mr. Robertson says the module is a helpful tool for his company. "What the data module does is let us see how much clients are using preferred suppliers," he explains. "We can then use that data to negotiate rates."
The ability to control where and how travel money is spent is the idea behind Amex's new Pre-Trip Auditor software, says Lyell Farquharson, vice-president and general manager for the company's Canadian business travel operations.
"In the past, we used manual systems to ensure compliance with a client's travel policies. Now everything is automated, whether the booking is done online or through one of our service representatives," he says.
This means that any time a customer has an employee book a flight, hotel or rental car, the software ensures that it is done with a preferred supplier and in the right class of travel. The service, which costs between $3,000 and $50,000 annually, also automatically directs the reservations, by e-mail, to the right corporate person for approval and returns the approval in the same automatic e-mail format.
"If an employee goes against policy the client has two choices of automatic e-mail response," says Mr. Farquharson. "There is the polite version that points out the error, and a sterner version saying the booking cannot be approved because it does not comply with policy."
The Amex system also ensures that no two senior executives travel on the same flight and can also co-ordinate group travel.
Mr. Farquharson says the Pre-Trip Audit product "met with pretty solid acceptance in the United States when it was introduced earlier this year, and we expect the same here in Canada."
Special to The Globe and Mail
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