Enhancing Business Travel Through Personalised Support

As you may know (or be painfully aware if you’re a fellow founder), the start-up world is challenging. It can be a bit stressful and demanding, sometimes putting you in situations of self-reflection and self-doubt. Ok, let’s be honest. It more often feels like you’re strapped in an accelerating rollercoaster, clutching on tightly and grasping out for support whilst flying around unfamiliar surroundings at breakneck speed.

Last week was one of those weeklong rollercoaster rides. A bit manic.

But then I had the pleasure of meeting Louis Magliaro, the Executive Vice President of the BTN Group. Even though he is incredibly busy overseeing the preparations for the Business Travel Show in London on the 19th – 20th June, he called me to discuss our work at Bizumi and attendance at the show. It was productive and touched upon business activities, but for me, importantly, it calmed the week’s chaos late on a Friday afternoon.

It was just a chat but the fact that he made time to call helped me reflect on our approach to developing our new business travel management platform.

A key area of our work is developing a novel location-based support service, integrating values that meet the needs of the diverse traveller. We know this is a really challenging area but there is an ever-growing demand to extend duty of care to all staff, respecting an individual’s differences, beliefs, religion, gender, and perspectives.

Like many start-ups we focus on developing smart automated workflows, clever algorithms, and artificial intelligence to streamline complex processes and make travel planning simpler and more efficient. The widespread adoption of cloud-based services accessed through mobile apps enables us to share knowledge to tackle a vast number of scenarios, but we understand that technology alone is not enough.

After receiving that call from Louis from his New York office late on a Friday afternoon to have a chat and offer some friendly support, that calmed a frantic week, I was reminded why we will be offering a support line to all business travellers. Our wellbeing benefits most from that human touch.

Oh, and apparently you can also make calls and talk to real people from your mobile.

And it makes a significant difference!