IN the midst of the pandemic and a travel shutdown, TripActions, a business travel and spend management platform, announced it raised US$155 million in Series E funding. Its co-founder & CEO Ariel Cohen said in spite of the events of 2020, TripActions had seen accelerated adoption by companies and its business grew to over $3.6 billion and added its largest accounts to date.
WiT spoke to TripActions’ Chief Travel Officer Dany Finkel (pictured) about when and how he sees business travel recovering and why investors are still interested in the travel space.
The rebounding of business travel: what shape and form will that take and when? It is obvious travel, for both leisure and business, will likely be altered permanently.
As we pass the year mark of the global shut down, it is increasingly clear that no one has a perfect crystal ball to predict the return of business travel. With that said, we are seeing positive signs that a rebound of business travel is on the horizon. The first sign is increasing growth in the leisure sector. There is incredible pent-up demand for travel, and people are choosing to focus on the positive benefits of travel for personal trips. This does not change potential liability concerns that companies have when their employees travel for business, but clearly there is an increased willingness and desire for individuals to travel. Second is the increased rollout of vaccines around the world, coupled with the reduction in global cases, which will continue to instill confidence in traveling. Finally, our internal travel data show that more people are taking business trips, the number of companies travelling has increased, and we’ve seen a marked increase in the number of companies with at least one employee travelling or with an upcoming trip booked.
We know this is just the beginning, and it’s likely that how and why and when business travel occurs will change in the future. For example, there is going to be more thought before each trip to ensure that any risk is worth the travel and that company resources are being carefully monitored. Will I fly from the US to Singapore for a three-hour meeting next year like I may have done in 2019? Likely not. I will try to combine as many trips into one, which could mean longer, more intentional travel.
Although many people are predicting a decline in business travel, there is an interesting counter-narrative wherein business travel increases. With relaxed work location policies and distributed teams, there will be a greater need to bring employee groups together. Many of these groups didn’t travel for work pre-COVID, like G&A or R&D functions; however, coming together for regular meetings will be critical to ensure relationships are maintained and innovation is driven forward. It will be interesting to see how distributed workforces change business travel in the future.
Despite the changes over the past year, we’ll see positive developments in the travel experience. There will be a continued focus on cleanliness throughout a traveller’s journey, whether on an airplane or in a hotel. There will be a greater focus on automation and efficiency, which will be helpful for time-conscious business travellers. And more information will be given to travellers to ensure they are choosing the best experience. This will be hard for many existing travel channels to synthesize, but platforms like TripActions, which are built with a consumer mentality, will become increasingly important for businesses to put in front of their traveling employees.
Why are investors attracted to companies in your space? What is the hook for them?
At TripActions, we are seeing rising demand from companies looking to partner with a travel and spend management provider that can quickly innovate and help businesses better control spend. This was a driving force behind our $155 million Series E growth round announced in January. Despite the challenges that 2020 brought to the travel industry, we saw accelerated customer growth and incredible innovation from our teams. Since March, TripActions has launched more than 40 new major new product enhancements and capabilities, including an industry-leading COVID-19 dashboard, reimagined spend analysis dashboard, enhanced traveller safety reporting, automated unused ticket technology, TripActions Liquid Expense and TripActions Enterprise Edition.
Investors know that business travel will resume and TripActions is leading the industry with our innovative products and travel-first customer mindset. In fact, in the past year, we have grown by 73% due to the amazing product-market fit that we have developed over the past five years.
What do you think will be the turning point for travel to return in full force? What needs to happen before it does?
In order for the business travel to return, offices need to reopen with some semblance of normalcy and borders need to open. Business travel only makes sense if you have offices to visit, and people willing to meet you face-to-face. For this to happen, a larger portion of the population needs to be vaccinated along with a reduction in virus transmission rates. While there is no doubt that domestic travel will rebound faster, as well as certain international corridors like Hong Kong and Singapore, we need to get closer to where we were in 2019 global mobility to see a more robust return to business travel.
Is the travel industry doing enough collectively to help governments feel comfortable to open the borders again? Or is there nothing more the industry can do?
The travel industry absolutely needs to come together to create standard policies, technologies and infrastructures to ensure travel health information can be readily screened by government borders around the world. We are seeing this with health passports, such as the IATA Travel Pass and Commonpass, but there is still work to do. As previously mentioned, without open borders, there will be an inherent weight tied to business travel rebound. The difficulty is that each country has its own rules and procedures that are unlikely to change, meaning the global travel industry has to conform to the strictest standards and ensure programs, initiatives, etc. are as widely accepted as possible.
