Leveling up traveler experience with TripSource

Traveler experience is top of mind for most all travel programs, but what is BCD doing to enhance your traveler's journey? On this episode, Chad and Miriam reconnect with Hannah Kahn, Sr. Director, Product Planning, and the trio discuss what travelers want these days, who the modern business traveler is, and Hannah leaks an exciting announcement about TripSource, our traveler engagement platform. 

Have a comment or suggestion? Head to www.BCDTravel.com/podcast to connect with us today! 

Learn more by visiting https://www.bcdtravel.com or https://www.linkedin.com/company/bcd-travel/

Transcript

Intro:

Welcome to Connections with BCD Travel, an ongoing conversation about the modern-day travel program, the impact of technology, and how travel buyers can take control and drive change. What are we waiting for? Let's start connecting.

Miriam Moscovici:

Hello everyone. I'm Miriam Moscovici. I lead Partnerships and Intelligence at BCD and I'm one of your hosts for the Connections podcast.

Chad Lemon:

And I'm Chad Lemon. I work in Digital Strategy and Advancement at BCD. We love to hear from you. So after listening to this episode, head to bcdtravel.com/podcast to give us some feedback. Miriam, as you know, we are going to kick things off with the Quick 60 in Business Travel, where I read a snippet from a recent BCD Research and Intelligence report and get some more insights from you.

Miriam Moscovici:

All right, what do you have for me today?

Chad Lemon:

So sticking with our sustainability report theme that we're doing on all of these first few episodes, I wanted to highlight some of the sustainable travel options that are encouraged by employers. Things like trains instead of planes, combining several trips into one and selecting eco-friendly accommodation. Thoughts?

Miriam Moscovici:

We did a study recently that showed that corporate policies are often lacking that actionable opportunity for sustainable travel choices. And despite the importance of the topic, only about a third promote eco-friendly options at the point of booking, as we found out in our research. First, balancing the need for business travel with emissions produced as a result is really important for reducing the environmental impact of corporate travel. According to the survey results, reduced travel volumes is promoted by travel buyers the most. It rose from the fourth position in 2021. Other sustainable travel options frequently offered by travel buyers include traveling by train instead of plane, like you mentioned, using direct flights instead of connecting and combining several trips into one. Those are mentioned by four in 10. Travelers, they mostly agree, they quote a similar sustainable travel policies at their disposal. They find that there's not a lot of policy available around sustainability. At the same time, 15% of buyers and 10% of travelers report no sustainable travel options being offered by their companies at all. So there's a lot of work to be done.

Chad Lemon:

Well, I really enjoy adding this new segment in, not only for the insights, but it also highlights some of the amazing work that you and the research team are consistently putting out.

Miriam Moscovici:

Yeah. Mike, Natalia, Melina work really hard and you can find any of our research available if you're a client on the Connect Network and otherwise you can find it on bctravel.com/resources.

Chad Lemon:

All right. So we have a big episode today, so let's jump right into it.

Miriam Moscovici:

Indeed, we do. As we all know, traveler experience is at the forefront of everyone's minds and is only getting more and more important. Not only do we have some exciting insights to talk about today, we also have some exciting news to share about our traveler engagement platform, TripSource.

Chad Lemon:

If you're an avid listener to Connections, you have heard our guest's voice before making her third appearance on the podcast is Hannah Kahn, senior director, Product Marketing.

Welcome back, my friend. So much has been going on in your world lately.

Hannah Kahn:

Yeah, it's been a really busy time. I'm glad to be back for another episode. Excited and I'm always excited to talk about what BCD is doing when it comes to improving the traveler experience. And I happen to have a pretty cool announcement on something my team has been working on for the last, I don't know, year or so. It's finally coming to life.

Miriam Moscovici:

Okay. Well, before we get to that exciting announcement, I want to do some setup with some broad traveler experience questions. Specifically I want to ask you about the modern business traveler today because it's not the same traveler that was five or 10 years ago and the experience of that modern traveler has also changed. So what's your take? Who is that modern business traveler these days and what do they want?

Hannah Kahn:

I mean, is anything the same as it was 10 years ago?

Miriam Moscovici:

No.

Chad Lemon:

Valid point.

Hannah Kahn:

I think the biggest change is that we tend to expect things to work on our terms. And I talk about people in general because traveler are people. So travelers aren't any other different, they're just basically a microcosm. And maybe their expectations are even higher that things work on our terms because travel itself has gotten really complicated. So we've come to understand that the shopping and booking experience across the spectrum. So you have to think of it from pre-trip to on-trip to post-trip. It needs to be simple, intuitive, efficient. Those are the perceptions that add up to an effective experience. And so that's how we start to think about things.

Miriam Moscovici:

I agree. As a frequent traveler myself, I have certain expectations. And back in the day we were told, "Here are the rules. Here's where you're going and here's how to book your trip." And you just go. And there were rules and you didn't stray from those rules. But that mentality has changed, right?

Hannah Kahn:

I think the framework of rules still is there. You have to get from point A to point B. You have a certain budget that you have to spend. You probably have some preferred suppliers that you'd need to use. I think it's about the packaging that's really different. And when I talk about packaging, it's about the information, do you have the knowledge? Do you have the opportunity to engage? So it's really about understanding. But you still have to stay in your travel policy. I think now travelers want to see everything and all their choices in one place. We want all our choices to be at our fingertips. We want to know how to interact with those rules that we have and that's the experience part. How do we make those rules and engage on our own terms? And an experience that drives the right decision is key and that's what we want to deliver.

Chad Lemon:

Well, speaking of delivering things, I can't take this anticipation anymore. I know you have an exciting announcement about TripSource, our traveler engagement platform. And I know that everything we just talked about feeds into this exciting announcement because you and the team, you all listen, you learn, you understand the needs of today's traveler. So spill the beans. What is the exciting news?

Hannah Kahn:

We're really excited. We've completely redesigned the website. So the TripSource website, we've gone through a total change and the words that you just described, listen, learn and understand is really what we call human-centric methodology. And we've been using that for our design standpoint and we will be launching the new desktop version in mid-March.

Miriam Moscovici:

That's so exciting, Hannah. I know our listeners are looking forward to the launch. Being part of the team, can you tell us about some of the major changes, more than just the headlines? Tell us about the methodology behind some of these advancements you're making.

Hannah Kahn:

That's a great question, Miriam. We really took to heart the idea of designing in a human-centric experience and being very purposeful in the design methodology. So when we talk about human-centric, it's really built on four principles. And when you think about that, it's collaboration: So how do we work together? How do we take in feedback? How do we listen? Empathy: What are we trying to accomplish? And if we were in a traveler's shoes, what would we do and how would we know? Iteration: Nothing's perfect the first time and you can keep changing things and making them better, so you're not going to launch with something that's never going to change again. And then overall, how does it drive the experience: So that's that problem solving technique, what do we want you to do at any certain stage in the shopping and booking experience?

Chad Lemon:

Hannah, listening to you cover all of that, I can't help but think about the self-service concept. As in when I travel, I like having the option to manage my trip fully, booking, shopping, adjustments, etc. Can you talk about some of the benefits that the new tripsource.com will bring to self-service?

Hannah Kahn:

Sure. I think there's a few key points. That first one is a very obvious one. When you log in, you land on an actual true homepage, a landing page. So you can pick your happy path. If you want to book, you can book. If you need to make adjustments or just look at a current trip or a past trip, you can do all that. Before we were guiding you where we thought and that isn't necessarily the best way to do things. The other one, and this seems simple but I think it's a really important one, is the ability to download an invoice. So the fact that that's a piece that people often lose or misplace, but it's really important and you need that for most people when they turn in their expenses. And so this really just makes that simple.

It won't be available to everyone to start with, it's a regional deployment, but we're going to get there. And we're really excited about that one. Airline credits. So for some travelers they have credits, they don't know them, they're not sure when they expire, they not sure what to do with them. So now as you're in the actual booking flow, when you're selecting a flight, you can see, oh, I have X amount of credits on X amount of airline, and it could influence you to use those up before they expire. So I think it's self-service and also helps with budget and to make sure that you're managing those credits effectively.

And then one other one that is kind of silly, but it's actually really important is we've really elevated help. So previously help was buried in the FAQs and you had to dig down and it was silly because if you need help that should be at the forefront and super easy to find. So we've put that in the global nav, so it's right there in front of everybody in the navigation bar and you can go there, you can open a case, you can get to the FAQs. So there's a lot more ways that you can help yourself without having to be reliant on other folks.

Chad Lemon:

What about booking feature improvements? Anything to note there?

Hannah Kahn:

Yeah, I think we added the ability to add a segment to an already booked trip. So if you already have your air booked but you didn't book your hotel, you can go into that same trip and just easily add a hotel, a car, whatever you need so that it's all in one. Again, keeping everything combined. We've added a lot more sustainability indicators, to tie into what you were saying earlier. We can now show you can filter by eco-labeled hotels or even hotels that have EV charging stations. You can see CO2 emissions on your flights. So it makes it a little bit more integrated into the booking experience if that's important to you and how you want to manage your travel. And then if you don't use TripSource for your OBT, you can easily navigate to whichever OBT you do use. So we've elevated that, also made it part of that global navigation and it's really simple. So you can use TripSource to manage your trip and that makes that very contained, but you can easily go out to your OBT and have that experience be pretty seamless.

Miriam Moscovici:

Okay. I know it's hard to visualize while you're listening to a podcast, but can you describe this new user experience?

Hannah Kahn:

It's hard to visualize. So first off, I hope everybody goes in there when we launch in the middle of March. But I think the three big buckets that we try and talk about and help people understand what we were doing is, one, it's about personalization. So now it's very easy to manage your preferences and your travel details and customize your experience. So what's important to you? We've never changed or veered away from our philosophy of engagement and interaction. So still super easy to stay informed and connected throughout the journey and get those messages at the right time when you need to stay connected to your corporate office. And then from the OBT part, the transaction part, we still have all the best rates and the fares and the policy guidance. So that fundamental framework that we talked about at the beginning, you still have to follow certain rules, but we've added on these additional layers to expand the experience.

Miriam Moscovici:

Hannah, TripSource is both on the web and it is a mobile app. How come you guys decided to focus on just the website as opposed to the mobile app?

Hannah Kahn:

We're always working on both. So it's been a longer while since we completely refreshed the web and when we looked at statistics, it's interesting to see that for the most part, people still use web when they're doing the shopping and booking.

Miriam Moscovici:

I do, yeah.

Hannah Kahn:

And then they go to the app when they're on trip.

Miriam Moscovici:

That's what I do, yeah.

Chad Lemon:

Same. Exact same behavior.

Hannah Kahn:

Yeah, it's a very common thing. And I think it's cool, that's why TripSource has both and they're both important to us and we look at the design of both all the time. But we really wanted to elevate some of what was going on in the... We have all these new features when it comes to shopping and booking in this new navigation. And so we chose to refresh desktop, but we're still working on the app and you'll see iterative changes there as well.

Chad Lemon:

All right, Hannah, last question. In a sentence or two, what's the one thing you want our listeners to know about traveler experience in the new TripSource?

Hannah Kahn:

I think that we talked a lot about design and what that is, and I think design is a lot more important than how something looks. But a good design makes people confident in the tool, it makes people act and use the tool. And most important, it takes a good product and it makes it great. So that's where we've really been focusing our time on how can we elevate tools that people use and produce an experience that's even better.

Chad Lemon:

Hannah and I work together on many things at BCD and I affectionately call her queen most of the time because she is one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever worked with. I just love catching up with her.

Miriam Moscovici:

Agreed. And not only was it exciting to hear about the new advancements for the tripsource.com relaunch, some of those insights she rattled off at the start of the show about traveler experience as a whole, that was pretty interesting.

Chad Lemon:

Well, that's all for this episode, but you know there is more connecting to do. So before you scroll to our next episode, head to bcdtravel.com/podcast to give us some feedback. And don't forget to download and review the Connections with BCD Travel podcast today.

Outro:

Thank you for connecting with us. BCD Travel helps companies travel smart and achieve more. We drive program adoption, cost savings, and talent retention through digital experiences that simplify business travel. Learn more about the topics you heard on this episode by visiting bcdtravel.com/podcast.