BCD Travel has introduced the Informed Traveler, a global initiative aimed at helping travellers, travel managers and agents make smarter business decisions amid a landscape of constantly changing rules, laws and procedures.
With the Informed Traveler, users gain access to real-time information such as destination risk alerts, airline and hotel policies, ground transportation protocols and travel restrictions.
“The sheer volume of Covid information available to consumers is astonishing,” said John Snyder, president and CEO at BCD. “Our content engine pulls information from more than 800 sources, curates and distributes it across all traveller touchpoints including agent point-of-sale, the TripSource mobile app, and the responsive Covid-19 Information Hub on TripSource.com.”
Informed Traveler is being rolled out in phases. The first phase, available now, includes agent access to destination content and travel requirements, a Covid-19 Information Hub accessible from TripSource.com, itinerary communications and mobile notifications.
The second phase (launching in August), will allow travellers to enter their itinerary details to generate more personalised search results on the latest Covid-19 related information.
The Informed Traveler is based on extensive traveller research and customer interviews that illustrated a change in the way travellers plan for a trip.
“Pre-Covid programmes focused primarily on two phases of the trip cycle: the booking process and the actual journey,” noted Heather Wright, vice president product marketing at BCD.
“Now we have new areas of focus that are just as, if not more, important. The first is the decision phase, where a traveller looks at trip variables such as risk, cost and route and makes a conscious decision whether to book the trip. The second is the preparation phase, where travellers monitor trip details – which could change between booking and the journey – researches guidelines and requirements and gathers travel tips.”
Earlier in June, BCD Travel launched a Back to Travel digital guide, a resource for travel managers to rethink their programme’s return to active travel. It covers four areas – duty of care, traveller communications, spend management, and travel policy – where each section highlights trends, practical advice, checklists and solutions.
