The Business Travel Magazine’s ‘Future Role of the Travel Manager’ survey revealed that a whopping 50% of travel buyers said ‘better technology’ would make their job less challenging. It was also crazy to see in another recent survey, conducted by ITM, that more than 80% of travel buyers said their corporate booking tool was not fit for purpose.  

People’s perception of technology these days is interesting. I feel the term ‘technology’ is used as a blanket expression for anything that involves an IT developer writing some sort of computer code. But what does ‘code’ actually do? If we break it down to brass tax, code refers to rules that are applied to inputs and outputs of data.  

If technology is simply the transposition of data via user interfaces that provides meaningful, actionable opportunities, where is our industry going wrong? Is the problem the technology or is it the data ‘inputs’ and the fact that tech companies are having to focus huge efforts on data acquisition and cleansing? 

Or perhaps we’re not informing buyers about what’s available to them outside of the legacy channels? I see savvy travel buyers trying to dramatically alter the way they consume content and offer services to their travellers, but it feels like they must either have deep pockets or be mavericks who go against the industry norm to drive improvement.

This quandary gets me super excited because it presents a huge opportunity for those of us who are striving to change the technological landscape for the benefit of buyers and their suppliers. 

At TripStax we don’t believe every travel buyer needs huge tech budget or to be a pioneer who fights against the industry. We believe technology should be the enabler for all buyers to excel in their jobs, on behalf of their companies and their travellers.

The TBTM survey also revealed that 35% of buyers said ‘more data’ would make their jobs easier. In my mind this challenge is not about a lack of data. There is an overwhelming amount of data. The challenge revolves around how the industry is failing to give buyers access to a single point of truth, which consolidates all data into a meaningful and actionable framework. 

“We don’t believe every travel buyer needs huge tech budget or to be a pioneer who fights against the industry”

The first set of data created in business travel is the product that is for sale by the supplier: a seat on a flight, a room in a hotel, a ride in a car, and so on.  Once that product is selected by a node in the industry, numerous pieces of information are added to that original data set to enable it to flow around the haphazard B2B travel ecosystem – a process that certainly doesn’t lend itself to accurate and consistent data inputs.

So, if the precision of the data inputs improves, surely the opportunities created by the outputs can be monumental? Imagine if every input along that original data set’s journey was so obscenely accurate that those who write the code behind the scenes were given the freedom to rely on that input, and change the consistency and reliability of the output. If our industry was obsessive about the accuracy of data inputs, would the much-needed technology evolution begin?

Currently TripStax’s primary customer base is TMCs, but the longer we see so many buyers calling out ‘technology’ and ‘data’ access as a hinderance to their workloads, the more inclined we are to start supporting buyers directly and kick-start that evolution. We are certainly interested to hear from buyers on the specific technology challenges they face. 

Jack Ramsey is CEO of TripStax, which launched to market two years ago with a stack of cloud-based modules, powered by the TripStax Core, a data-processing engine. He was previously with ATPI and Travelport.

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