By Frederic Saunier, head of corporate IT APAC, Amadeus Asia Pacific
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Today’s empowered corporate citizen is starting to grasp their travel destiny and make their aspirations known – among their wishlist is the expectation to bring some leisure elements into their business travel.
Which brings us to our beloved industry buzzword: ‘bleisure’.
According to a Skift trend report, 60% of global travellers claim to have taken a bleisure trip, usually adding two days of leave to work-related travel. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in Asia Pacific, with Asian business travellers almost twice as likely as their European counterparts to extend a business trip over a weekend.
As employees exercise greater freedom and crave a travel culture that combines productivity and unique, personalised experiences, a new and more complex landscape is emerging. Can travel management companies and corporations evolve from their traditional approaches to embrace this future?
The well-connected bleisure traveller
Asia Pacific remains the largest travel market in the world, and is expected to gain another five percent in market share by 2018, while the US and Western Europe will lose three percent and two percent respectively.
This growth will be partly fuelled by millennials who, having already started entering the workforce and yearn to explore the world on their own terms (but on the company purse), and partly by the emerging middle class, who see travel as a perk. With talent acquisition top of the agenda for forward-looking employers, offering appealing travel benefits may be key to wooing top talent.
Frederic Saunier, head of corporate IT APAC, Amadeus Asia Pacific
A recent report commissioned by Singapore Tourism Board (STB) revealed an appetite for greater autonomy and access to travel content while ‘on the go’. More than half viewed work trips as a travel experience and 69% exercised freedom when choosing airlines or hotels, which means corporations and travel management companies (TMCs) are at risk of losing the battle if they don’t reboot their approach.
Indeed, employers are starting to recognise the benefit of moving away from “command-and-control” to a more balanced approach. And technology is key. Of course, a sophisticated but flexible corporate online booking and expense tool is fundamental, but mobile and social is there where the real difference will be made.
A study by Phocuswright also revealed that smart phones and tablets account for one in every five travel dollars spent. In fact, the conversation around the growth of mobile has become moot: it is our second skin in every aspect of life, including travel. Which means it is foolish for any company not to offer connected experience at every step of the customer journey – not only keeping bleisure travellers better informed, it means providing them with more content options, self-servicing, and flexibility to tailor their experiences.
Enhancing the bleisure traveller journey
Of course none of this is at the expense of a good TMC – far from it, they are indispensable. They have first-hand knowledge of a traveller’s itinerary, profile, preferences, travel history and policies, and thus are uniquely positioned to offer a truly personalised service. TMCs have a golden opportunity to leverage technology to innovate – in partnership with technology providers like Amadeus – and make business travel more efficient, customised and seamless.
As the needle shifts towards bleisure travel, TMCs could tap on mobile as a means to not only communicate with the traveller, but to cross-sell, upsell and service throughout the entire travel journey. It will take some investment to get it right, but in a deeply competitive environment, it would seem wise to capitalise on this lucrative tribe.
Amadeus takes a traveller-centric approach to product development – including the development of integrated, end-to-end solutions that improve the overall traveller experience. We will take corporate travel to a new level this year with the arrival of the ‘next big thing’ in corporate travel and expense: a breakthrough technology platform that will offer a world of benefits to TMCs, corporations and corporate travellers. Expect to hear more from us in the coming months, but for now, we continue to connect the dots across the ecosystem to shape the future of travel.
