Tag: AirPortal 360

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Business Travel Travel Management

Travel Smarter—With Our Travel Analytics Tools

travel analytics tools

We are excited to announce our latest innovation in travel management technology at this year’s GBTA Convention in San Diego, CA. In connection with Domo, the world’s leading data visualization platform, we are premiering our advanced travel analytics tools. Integrated within our AirPortal platform, these 16 tools allow our customers to visualize their travel data in new ways, empowering them to make data-driven decisions.

Our CEO, Mike Cameron says, “In today’s world, you have to bring technology to the front and provide meaningful tools to move business forward. Without it, travel managers will fall behind.” We find clients often avoid analyzing their travel data altogether, never seeing the insights that their program and travelers really need. That was our motivation behind developing a solution that makes travel data easier to understand. “Being able to visualize the story their data tells allows them to take informed action that ultimately helps them run a more cost-effective travel program.”

What are the additional benefits of our travel analytics tools?

  • Easy accessibility – Located on the AirPortal 360 dashboard, travel managers will find a comprehensive overview of their travel data in one convenient location. With 16 data cards on display, additional information and filters can be accessed within each card. Further customization and display settings are also available.
  • Reduces travel spend – Understand the story your travel program is telling you and use it to reduce costs. For example, by using the ‘Online vs. Full Service’ or ‘Top 25 Travelers’ data cards, a travel manager can understand their travelers’ habits or preferences. By then aligning travel policies, they can ultimately save the company money while meeting the needs of their employees.
  • Helps negotiate better vendor contracts – Identify the trends hiding in your data. By using the ‘Hotel By State’ or ‘Top 10 Hotel Chains’ data cards, travel managers can analyze patterns within their travel data. Through this easy analysis, they may recognize increased hotel bookings within one state or chain, providing a chance to negotiate better vendor contracts.

By providing easier visualizations of their data, travel managers can more effectively understand their travel program, ultimately empowering them make data-driven decisions. Stop by our expo booth 535 for a first hand look at our premier technology tools or schedule an appointment with our team through the convention planner.

Hope to see you at GBTA this week!

Categories
Travel Management Travel Technology

How AirPortal 360 Provides Actionable Intelligence

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At Christopherson Business Travel, we strive to continually develop travel technology that effortlessly eases travel and travel management headaches.  We’ve learned that while an engaging and useable platform is necessary, quick analysis and actionable take-aways are becoming crucial components to our clients. That’s why we further developed our AirPortal 360 technology to include actionable intelligence. We provide actionable items that your team can run with immediately in addition to our existing technology.

AirPortal includes many tools that help travel managers and travelers. Travel managers can keep tabs on various aspects of their travel programs.  We have always focused on creating tools that are elegant and easy to use.  Now with actionable intelligence, we take it one step further by reaching into the various products and retrieving the items that actually need attention. This helps ensure that important items do not slip through the cracks. This give travel managers the confidence that they are supporting both their travelers and their managed travel program.  

Travel Manager’s Actionable Intelligence includes:

  1. Travel Approvals Pending
  2. Hotel Payment Authorizations Failed
  3. Safety Check Assistance Requests
  4. New Traveler Enrollment Requests
  5. Trips Missing Hotels
  6. Unused Tickets Expiring
  7. Vendor Contracts Expiring

Additionally, we make sure travelers have their own dashboard to view their itinerary and documents. With our My Travel dashboard, they can quickly access their travel information in one place. Here they can effectively communicate their hotel plans, unused tickets and additional items, further completing compliance and duty of care responsibilities.  

Traveler’s Actionable Intelligence includes:

  1. Travel Approvals Pending
  2. Trips Missing Hotels
  3. Unused Tickets Expiring
  4. Credit Card Expiring (coming soon)
  5. Passport Expiring (coming soon)

AirPortal users receive a daily digest email with a list of their action items.  The user can choose the time of day they would like their daily digest delivered.  From the email they login into AirPortal Actionable Intelligence Dashboard and handle the items that require their attention.  

To learn more about our new AirPortal 360 Dashboard, contact your Christopherson Business Travel Account Manager or fill our the contact form on this page. Want to learn more? Read our company philosophy or additional travel technology solutions.

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Business Travel Travel Industry

Christopherson Sponsors Concur Ignite 2015

Concur_TMC_Preferred_PartnerAs a Concur Preferred Partner, Christopherson Business Travel had the privilege of participating in Concur’s annual sales kickoff event, Ignite 2015, in Bellevue, WA. Nearly 20 Concur business partners joined 1,100 Concur executives, management, business development, and account management team members as they prepare for another year of making travel and expense management better for companies and travelers around the world. With the recent sale of Concur to SAP, the event was full of energy and excitement about the future of the combined organizations.

Our colleagues at Concur were interested to learn more about Christopherson’s travel management solutions and our integration with Concur Travel and Expense. As the 11th largest Travel Management Company in the U.S., Christopherson provides customers with a powerful end-to-end travel management solution and is confident of the value our exclusive travel technologies, like AirPortal 360™ and AirPortal 360™ Mobile, can bring to Concur customers.

Christopherson values our Preferred Partnership status with Concur and enjoyed this opportunity to participate in Ignite 2015.

Categories
Business Travel Travel Management

Three key strategies common to best-in-class travel management programs

With Christopherson Business Travel's strategic travel management services, companies can create best-in-class travel management programs.
With Christopherson Business Travel’s strategic travel management services, companies can enjoy best-in-class travel management programs.

According to Travel Market Report, “Travel accounts for a significant portion of total corporate expenses. But just how significant may be a surprise … Business travel accounts for anywhere between 8% and 12% of the overall enterprise expense budget. This is bad news for travel managers whose companies see travel as a cost center, but good news for those whose companies see travel as an investment in revenues.”

Market research firm, Aberdeen Group, identified three key strategies common to best-in-class travel management programs:

  1. Support travel management with analytics, integration and mobility
  2. Use mobile apps and portals to put expense management directly in the hands of travelers
  3. Leverage analytics and integration to drive transparency into travel processes and spending to improve corporate budgeting, planning, and forecasting

As a leader in the business travel industry and the 11th largest travel management company in the U.S., Christopherson Business Travel is committed to providing innovative and integrated travel management services that accomplish those three key strategies.

By developing proprietary technologies like AirPortal 360 and AirPortal 360 Mobile, Christopherson supports their more than 1,000 corporate clients’ travel programs with that much-needed analytics, integration, and mobility.

Additionally, clients of Christopherson enjoy the added benefit of a consultative Account Manager whose job it is to help leverage that analytics, drive transparency in travel processes and spending, and improve corporate travel budgeting, planning, and forecasting.

Key strategies for best-in-class travel management programs 1, 2, and 3: Check, check, and check.

To learn more about how Christopherson can help your company implement these three key strategies into your travel program, please contact one of our business executives.

Categories
Business Travel Travel Industry

The Science of Maintaining a Unique Competitive Advantage

competition_advantageWhen in business, whether you own the company or are an employee of it, it is important to understand the difference between “unique competitive advantages” and “business strengths.” Many companies will tout their “advantages,” but what they’re really presenting are just their basic strengths and most cases, are likely are only spouting clichés. An example of a common and overused business cliché is: “we will exceed your expectations.”

While business strengths are important, they are not differentiators. You need strengths just to stay in business. You need unique competitive advantages to grow and prosper, faster than your competition.

At Christopherson Business Travel we have approached the development of our unique competitive advantages as a science. This is the only way you’re able to succeed in a highly competitive marketplace.

In order for something to be defined as a “unique competitive advantage” we require that it pass a four-part test:
1.    It must be objective.
2.    It must be quantifiable.
3.    It can’t be a cliché.
4.    It can’t be claimed by our competitors.

An example of one of our unique competitive advantages is the recent introduction of AirPortal 360™ Mobile, the first comprehensive mobile app to provide corporate travel managers the ability to manage their company’s travel program from the palm of their hand. Read about it here.

The introduction of this newest unique competitive advantage garnered a great deal of media attention (see here), which is objective and quantifiable.

Can we objectively say that our unique competitive advantages have helped us grow faster than our competition? During the last five years we have more than doubled in size, growing from a $160 million company in 2007, to a $341 million company in 2012. Christopherson was recently ranked #11 in size, in the U.S., by Business Travel News (BTN). We were also the fastest growing of all the top 20 Travel Management Companies in the U.S., in terms of percentage growth. Read more here.

The BTN ranking and applicable growth rate are objective, quantifiable, not a cliché, and can’t be claimed by our competitors. Thus, Christopherson Business Travel can present our technology to be a “unique competitive advantage.”

Categories
Business Travel Travel Industry Travel Management Travel Technology

Christopherson Business Travel Releases AirPortal 360™ Mobile: The First Comprehensive Mobile App for Corporate Travel Managers

AirPortal 360 Mobile is the first mobile app that allows corporate travel managers the ability to manage their program wherever, whenever.
AirPortal 360 Mobile is the first mobile app that provides corporate travel managers the ability to manage their company’s travel program–wherever, whenever.

Christopherson Business Travel will soon be launching AirPortal 360™ Mobile, the first comprehensive mobile app to provide corporate travel managers the ability to manage their company’s travel program from the palm of their hand—wherever, whenever. (Read the full press release here.)

As the mobile version of Christopherson’s intelligent travel manager dashboard, AirPortal 360 Mobile delivers a collection of essential management tools that allow travel managers, and other key players in a company’s travel program, to maintain and manage their duty of care responsibilities, ensure better policy compliance, keep track of travelers and their itineraries, and more.

In the recent Business Travel News (BTN) article, “Assessing Mobile Travel Services and Strategies,” BTN stated that, “However nimble a corporate travel program might be, changes in its culture inevitably occur more slowly than did the rapid, massive embrace by business travelers of mobile technology.”

At Christopherson, we have noticed that while mobile technology innovation has progressed rapidly for travelers, there has not been much innovation when it comes to mobile technology for travel managers. The mobile apps that do exist for that market only provide a third-party software developer’s niche service, and until now, there have been no comprehensive mobile apps to help travel managers oversee their entire travel program. AirPortal 360 Mobile is the solution to that void.

Christopherson has long been a leader in adopting mobile business travel technology, as evidenced by the fact that we were the first travel management company to fully integrate TripIt’s interactive trip management services for all Christopherson business travelers. This occured three years ago, prior to Concur buying TripIt. (Read TripIt’s full press release here.)

Christopherson will be unveiling AirPortal 360 Mobile at the 2013 Global Business Travel Association convention, in San Diego, CA, August 4-7. The app is first available to iPhone users, and the Android version will be released in September 2013.

We invite you to stop by our booth (#3625) to take a look and demo the app for yourself.
GBTA Signature

Categories
Business Travel Travel Industry

Christopherson Business Travel to Attend GBTA Convention 2013

custom_1373323780_3625_728x90Screen shot 2013-07-08 at 4.57.04 PMThe 2013 GBTA Convention is quickly approaching! This year’s event is being held in San Diego, California from August 4-7 and Christopherson Business Travel is both a trade show sponsor and an active participant with more than a dozen attendees from our company.

We are excited to expand our booth space this year allowing for additional demo stations, beverages, snacks, and 15 drawings for $100 gift cards throughout the three-day convention. We’re also looking forward to releasing our new AirPortal 360™ Mobile technology.

AirPortal 360 Mobile is the first comprehensive mobile app specifically designed exclusively for the corporate travel manager. As the mobile version of Christopherson’s AirPortal 360 travel manager dashboard, AirPortal 360 Mobile delivers the essentials from our powerful collection of travel management software right to your fingertips.

Both easy-to-use and convenient, AirPortal 360 Mobile provides the ability to maintain duty of care responsibilities, keep track of travelers and itineraries, access and manage traveler profiles, ensure policy compliance, and more, even if you’re on the go.

If you are attending GBTA, please plan to stop by booth #3625. We’d love to show you our new AirPortal 360 Mobile. You can also schedule an appointment by emailing info@CBTravel.com.