The need for skilled travel counsellors is at an all-time high for
travel management companies because they are dealing with a loss of
skilled workers who left during the pandemic while at the same time
there is a heightened need for support and service.
Belinda Hindmarsh, executive vice president and chief growth officer
at CWT, and John Morhous, chief experience officer at Flight Centre
Travel Group, discussed these and other challenges facing the business
travel sector during the “Executive Panel: (Un)usual Business” at The
Phocuswright Conference.
“Trips are getting much more complex,” Hindmarsh says. “There’s a lot more need for safety and security.”
Morhous says he thinks about “what happens when the flight gets
cancelled and it’s the last flight back to your city and you’ve been on
business trip for three days.
“You don’t want to talk to a chatbot. You want to talk to a person who can actually do something for you,” according to Morhous.
He’s seeing a “renaissance of the travel consultant” and high demand
for those who can provide empathy and expertise to the level that
customers expect.
At the same time, Morhous says Flight Centre Travel Group is
transacting above 2019 levels with 60 to 70% of its pre-pandemic staff
thanks largely to innovation in automation.
“When we set off on a project, to put a new product out to market, to
build an enhancement, a lot of what we work on is trying to very
specifically find where that integration works best to balance the human
element and the robotic element,” he adds.
Sustainability is also a critical issue. Hindmarsh says large
companies are setting goals, and CWT helps them by using advanced
analytics and building in the capability to “make informed decisions at
point of sale.” In March, CWT integrated carbon emissions data into its
platform.
“The way we think about it is it’s our job to help them with both the
education part and also measuring the goals and getting to the goals,”
she says.
The will is there, Hindmarsh adds. In a recent survey of CWT
customers, two-thirds said sustainability is more important now than it
was pre-pandemic.
Watch the full discussion below with moderator Charuta Fadnis, senior
vice president of research and product strategy at Phocuswright.
Source: PhocusWire