Category: Press Release

CHICAGO—Aug. 6, 2019—With 83% of female business travelers facing safety concerns, according to GBTA research findings, Christopherson Business Travel has heavily invested in data-rich technology to provide safety tools for their clients’ travelers.

“Because traveler safety is a top priority, we have enhanced our duty-of-care tool, SecurityLogic™ with a powerful Safety Check™ feature,” said Mike Cameron, CEO at Christopherson Business Travel. “With Safety Check, travel managers can quickly verify their travelers’ safety.

“When the traveler receives a Safety Check, they can respond from their digital device with, ‘I’m safe,’ or ‘I need assistance.’

“If they click, ‘I need assistance,’ they can detail their needs and exact location, and we provide instant options for additional communication so the travel manager can provide immediate help.”

Christopherson’s university clients frequently use Safety Check for students traveling abroad to verify their location.

As Brenda Rivers, founder and strategic consultant at Andavo Meetings & Incentives, a division of Christopherson Business Travel, attests, potential dangers can happen at the most unexpected times.

“When 200 travelers were en route to Baltimore, Hurricane Sandy unexpectedly slammed into downtown Baltimore with category 4 winds and severe rain, which caused power outages and endangered our travelers,” said Rivers. “SecurityLogic is a tool that allows travel managers to pinpoint travelers’ exact locations, use Safety Check to determine their safety and communicate instructions to stay or to re-route them.”

Providing travel safety, especially for women, begins with the corporate travel manager, according to Rivers, who has 27 years in the travel business.

“Travel managers should track travel data, provide pre-travel event information and list destination details for high-risk areas,” she said. “A manual alone doesn’t suffice anymore. You have to walk travelers through role-play scenarios so they know more clearly what to do if they face danger. Even table-talk simulations are effective.”

Duty of care is the travel communities’ moral and legal obligation to take more serious responsibility for the safety of travelers, according to Cameron.

“Safety is always an issue for women everywhere, but it is amplified when we travel,” said Krista Erçin-Maurer, manager of marketing at Christopherson Business Travel. “Studies show women are assaulted more than men, signifying that safety has to be part of every company’s duty of care plan.”

The National Survey of Family Growth found that 25 percent of women are raped by age 44, whereas only eight percent of men say they have been raped by that same age.

“We’re often in new locations and out of our comfort zone. When traveling abroad, navigating foreign languages and different cultures add another safety-risk dimension,” said Erçin-Maurer. “In addition to utilizing technology like SecurityLogic, companies need to institute travel policies and risk management safety training. We recommend the following tips:

1. Partner with properties that have female-friendly rooms designated for safety, which are rooms on the third level or higher, close to the elevator, not at the end of the hallway, and are never near fire escapes or exterior entrances;
2. Avoid booking late meetings for female travelers that require them to return to the hotel after dark;
3. Use a car service and secure transport between all locations;
4. Provide safety training before trips, particularly when your female travelers are headed to areas of the world that are more dangerous for women;
5. Add communication requirements to your duty of care and risk management plans. Make sure female travelers know what to do and whom to contact if a safety incident occurs; and
6. Provide reliable communication methods, e.g., cell phones and cell service, wherever a woman is traveling in the world.”

Overall, companies should review safety issues women face, talk to their female employees, understand their worries, provide SecurityLogic technology, and update policies to today’s needs.

For more information on SecurityLogic and updated travel safety policies for women, contact Christopherson Business Travel at cbtravel.com.

Christopherson Business Travel, headquartered in Salt Lake City, is the independently owned leader in business travel management, digital travel tools, and business travel resources. As the twelfth largest business travel agency in the United States, with more than 480 team members and 5 full-service locations across the country, Christopherson supports more than $682 million in annual travel bookings. Christopherson provides intelligent travel management to more than 1,000 successful companies and organizations, and is an affiliate of BCD Travel. To learn more about Christopherson Business Travel, visit cbtravel.com.

 

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Media Contact:

Krista Ercin-Maurer

303-694-8770; krista.ercin-maurer@cbtravel.com

CHICAGO—Aug. 5, 2019—Christopherson Business Travel has reinvented how travel management companies approach the customer experience, delivering elevated human interaction in a world inundated with high-tech.

“Customer expectations are shaped by the most dynamic consumer experiences they encounter in other industries,” said Mike Cameron, CEO at Christopherson Business Travel. “While it may seem counter-intuitive in this tech-focused world, being customer-centric requires much more than providing the latest and greatest in technology.”

By focusing on specific consumer touchpoints and the individual needs present at those touchpoints, Christopherson has developed an approach that allows them to not only lead with their robust technology platform, but leverage the depth of their team’s experience and expertise for the benefit of clients.

“We’ll never stop innovating new technology to get data into the hands of those who need it, when and where they need it,” Cameron said. “But we’re also working to shift the customer experience with an elevated layer of consultative and personalized experiences.”

Is Christopherson’s investment working?

“Absolutely, it works,” said Jennifer Phan, senior program manager at University of Southern California’s American Film Showcase. “Technology is essential, but with the travel complexities I manage, I definitely need a travel advisor who is knowledgeable, accessible, and dependable. For me, that person is my travel advisor at Christopherson.”

The more complex the demands, the more important it is for the digital, consultative, and personalized experiences to connect in a symbiotic way. The result is a customer-centric experience that pays in dividends for the client, Cameron said.

“Frequently, travel planning is so complicated that my advisor and I have to get on the phone,” said Phan, who manages 50 programs traveling to 50 countries. “Six months ago, she saved us by providing solutions with a series of international flights. She even worked through her Thanksgiving holiday to arrange very complex flight plans with our people who were traveling and had complicated issues.”

In order to deliver on its promise of customer-centricity, Christopherson has implemented new trainings and technology so travel advisors, account managers, and online support teams have a deep, integrated knowledge of the client, their specific needs and processes, and a personal relationship with them.

“My advisor knows my system—she knows me!” Phan said. “I can count on her to the point that it would be impossible to do my job without her. She’s flexible, understands our needs, is intuitive, has a sense of humor, and follows up. Those qualities have saved me and have made my trust in a travel agent partner, such as Christopherson, locked in solid.”

Christopherson Business Travel, headquartered in Salt Lake City, is the independently owned leader in business travel management, online travel tools, and business travel resources. As the twelfth largest business travel agency in the United States, with more than 480 team members and 5 full-service locations across the country, Christopherson supports more than $682 million in annual travel bookings. Christopherson provides intelligent travel management to more than 1,000 successful companies and organizations, and is an affiliate of BCD Travel. To learn more about Christopherson Business Travel, visit cbtravel.com.

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Media Contact:

Krista Ercin-Maurer

303-694-8770

krista.ercin-maurer@cbtravel.com

 

BOSTON and SILICON SLOPES, UT – July 17, 2017 –? ?Christopherson Business Travel and Domo, today announced three new travel management solutions built to deliver groundbreaking analytics and insights on an organization’s travel budgets and spend. With the dynamic pace of change in the travel management industry, travel managers are inundated with data and information that tell different stories about the state of their travel budgets and spend. Domo and
Christopherson teamed up to develop industry-first mobile solutions that leverage Christopherson’s industry expertise and Domo’s ground-breaking technology platform to help travel managers quickly gain powerful insights to improve compliance, negotiate better rates, and improve the traveler experience. “The travel industry is becoming more complex and is ripe for disruption. While massiveamounts of travel data exists, many organizations find it difficult to harness deep insights and quickly take action with this data. By bringing new solutions to market with Christopherson, we are making it easier for travel managers to rapidly respond to the needs of the business and to be more impactful leaders in this time of dramatic change,” said Jay Heglar, chief strategy
officer at Domo. “As a long-standing leader in the business travel industry, we view ourselves as a high-tech travel management firm. As such, we offer industry-first technology that helps our customers solve their travel issues. Our partnership with Domo allows us to provide customers with new solutions that enable them to interact with and gain insights from their data in an easy, effortless manner,” said Mike Cameron, CEO at Christopherson Business Travel.

The new travel management solutions from Christopherson and Domo includes:

· Travel Leakage Analyzer:? This app allows travel managers to control and visualize “out of program” spend. Taking feeds from Christopherson’s AirPortal® and financial systems such as Concur, NetSuite, and QuickBooks, the Travel Leakage App visualizes where travel spend is in compliance, and more importantly, where it is not. Understanding where travel spend is out of policy can help travel managers change the negative trend and move towards improving
compliance.
· Hotel Spend Analyzer:? This app instantly finds hotel spend or total nights in any area to
help travel managers better negotiate contracts with vendors and improve the traveler experience. Domo takes multiple data feeds and matches them together to deliver insights such as tracking Total Room Nights, Average Daily Rate, and Total Spend in any custom region. Travel managers can instantly view all travel trends and spending across the globe by vendor, and are enabled with the information they need to negotiate better rates.
· Travel Analytics?: This dashboard is a set of best-practice visualizations offered through Christopherson that help travel managers easily and intuitively connect multiple real-time travel data feeds into the Domo platform. These rapid deployment cards will make it fast and simple to put the relevant insights into the hands of travel executives and managers.

Domo transforms the way business is managed by changing the relationship people–from the CEO to the frontline worker–have with data. Enterprise customers like Christopherson Business Travel chose Domo’s cloud-based platform because it puts data directly into the hands of people across the organization, offering top-rated ease of use, delivering powerful visualizations, and enabling more effective decisions that help provide better returns and keep their organizations competitive.

Ranked as the 12th largest business travel agency in the U.S. by Business Travel News, Christopherson Business Travel is the independently-owned leader in intelligent business travel management. Christopherson specializes in travel technology innovations, such as AirPortal®, the industry’s most robust travel management platform, and a consultative approach to account management. The company operates from five full-service locations, as well as 35
client-dedicated on-site locations.

Unveiling these new travel management solutions at the 2017 GBTA Convention–the world’s largest business travel event–Christopherson and Domo will have product details and demonstrations at the show. Travel executives interested in a live demo should visit Christopherson Business Travel at Booth 1175 and Domo at Booth 1079.

The GBTA Convention will take place at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, from July 15 through July 19. Domo is the proud sponsor of GBTA’s opening Convention Arena keynote featuring General (U.S. Army, Ret.) David H. Petraeus, taking place on Monday, July 17.

To learn more about the new travel management solutions from Christopherson Business Travel and Domo, visit: https://www.domo.com/gbta

About Christopherson Business Travel Christopherson Business Travel is a travel management company specializing in travel technology and consultative account management. As an industry innovator, Christopherson developed the first comprehensive mobile app for travel managers, AirPortal 360TM Mobile, and
continues to deliver meaningful digital solutions to clients via its robust software platform, AirPortal®. Ranked as the 12th largest business travel agency in the U.S. by Business Travel News, Christopherson operates from five full-service locations and has booked more than $600 million in travel in 2016 for more than 900 companies and organizations across the country. For more information, visit www.CBTravel.com. You can also follow Christopherson on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

About Domo
Domo helps all employees–from the CEO to the front-line worker–transform the way business is managed by connecting them to the right data and people they need to improve business results. Domo’s Business Cloud is the world’s first customizable platform that enables decision makers to identify and act on strategic opportunities in real time. The company works with the world’s leading and most progressive brands, including more than 25 percent of the Fortune 50, across multiple industries including travel and hospitality, retail, manufacturing, finance, technology and more. For more information, visit www.domo.com. You can also follow Domo on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.

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Domo, Domo Business Cloud and The Business Cloud are trademarks of Domo, Inc.
Media Contacts:
Christopherson Business Travel
krista.ercin-maurer@cbtravel.com

Domo, Inc.

PR@domo.com

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—Christopherson Business Travel is launching a number of technology enhancements in conjunction with an initiative to advance their integrated software platform, AirPortal®, to a new level of travel management. By providing business intelligence that is digitally transformed into actions, these enhancements help travel managers direct their programs both proactively and preemptively.

“We live in an age of information overload,” said Mike Cameron, CEO of Christopherson. “Companies need more than just business intelligence to be competitive. But the challenge isn’t where or how to find the data, it’s what to do with it once you have it. We’re designing tools to help you figure that out. Our latest technology developments provide the advantage of ‘actionable intelligence’ to empower travel managers as they direct their travel programs faster and
smarter.”

Among the most notable enhancements are those made to Christopherson’s AirPortal 360TM dashboard for travel
managers, and Airtinerary®, the company’s intelligent itinerary for business travelers.

AirPortal 360 now includes My Action Items, a work-to-zero tool which pulls data from Christopherson’s various
technology and presents a list of action items. Such items may include travel plans needing approval, reminders to use
expiring airline tickets, risk management duties, expiring vendor contracts, and more.

“Providing our clients with a work-to-zero dashboard that allows them to manage all their pending action items in
real time is revolutionary for travel managers,” Cameron said. “My Action Items is one more way we are helping our
travel managers think forward and work strategically.”

Another enhanced tool is Christopherson’s Airtinerary, which now allows travelers to interact with their travel plans. Travelers can modify, add, or delete plans, and purchase trip insurance, among other actions, directly from the mobile-
responsive Airtinerary.

“‘Mobile first’ is one of our mantras,” Cameron said. “Whether it’s our existing technology or new tools, we develop
intuitive, elegant, and responsive technology that meets the needs of our clients where they are and helps them be
proactive about their pending action items.”

Among other enhancements is a new dashboard for the company’s Hotel Attachment tool, that helps travel managers
better manage compliance and risk by knowing which travelers’ plans are incomplete and provides the ability to send
reminders to complete those plans prior to travel.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 18, 2016
Media Contact: Krista Maurer
801-327-7615, Krista.Maurer@CBTravel.com

Christopherson plans to unveil these enhancements at the 2016 GBTA Convention and Trade Show in Denver, CO
July 18-20.

About Christopherson Business Travel
Christopherson Business Travel, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah is the independently owned leader in business
travel management, online travel tools, and business travel resources. As the 12th largest business travel agency in the
United States, with 380 team members and five full-service locations, the company supports more than a half-billion
dollars in annual travel bookings for more than 900 successful organizations across the country including Fortune
500 companies, publicly and privately-owned business, universities, and government entities. Christopherson is an
affiliate of BCD Travel and a Preferred Partner of Concur. To learn more, visit CBTravel.com.

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