Business travel with personal attention

Business travel, above all, should be smooth and hassle-free. However, if you have to arrange it all yourself, sometimes you can't see the wood for the trees. At such times, enlisting the help of a travel management company (TMC) is a solution, because the right TMC unburdens, knows its way around and tailors the trip.

Laura Koreman of Uniglobe Travel explains that the right service requires a combination of technological developments and a personal touch. A business traveler wants to receive the right service quickly and tailored to their needs, whether it is individual business travel, MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Congresses and Events) or sports travel, for example.

Koreman has been director of Uniglobe Travel Holland at Schiphol since April of this year, having previously served the organization for 22 years. When asked what will change as a result of her appointment, she states, "The fixed value of Uniglobe Travel has been and remains through the years: through personal contact, our travel experts build a good relationship with our customers. The short lines of communication ensure that we unburden travelers quickly. On top of that, we have a global partner collective with intensive knowledge of the business travel market. The change I bring is mainly in cooperation and curiosity about what colleagues in the organization are doing and what conversations with our clients are about. My job as an organization is to stay future-proof in a rapidly changing world. This means that besides looking at developments in technology or sustainability, I especially want to listen and connect inside with outside. Of course I cannot do this alone, we have to do it together."

"Some business deals you only close when you are at the table with someone."

Technology
Some 150 people work at Uniglobe Travel across ten offices, making them a sizeable player in the Netherlands. Koreman: "The offices are run by independent entrepreneurs, and as head office it is our job to be facilitator to the entrepreneurs, focusing on the three main tasks: technology, marketing and purchasing. Of these three, technology takes the lead role. This is what the future is all about within all the pillars of our organization. This foundation has to be right."

MICE
A growing and therefore important part of Uniglobe Travel's activities is MICE, that is, meetings, incentives, conferences and events. In short: the organization of business group travel, sports trips and events organized by Uniglobe MICE experts in cooperation with the client. "Working this out is by definition customized. We translate the objective of the customer or client into a creative concept at home or abroad."

Medium Business
Uniglobe Travel focuses mainly on medium-sized companies, which need to travel intensively for business for a variety of reasons. "Some business deals you only close when you are sitting down with someone, so business travel is often a necessity, but people with positions such as mechanic or buyer are also on the road a lot," Koreman explains. Then the link to sustainability is easily made. The travel industry does not have a positive image, particularly due to the CO2 emissions from air travel, but that is not due to the willingness of the industry itself. "We are all pursuing the same goal, and that is to fly more sustainably. We are the same as a sector in that, but the deadline that is set is not realistic. We need to be able to continue to invest in the aviation sector, which will allow us to accelerate the sustainability agenda."

Online booking tool
Online booking has obviously taken off, but people still like it when there is support and an expert watching on the sidelines. Uniglobe Travel has its own online system called UBI, which allows you to book all parts of your business trip in one convenient booking tool. It also compares emissions for each mode of transport in the offer, allowing customers to make a considered choice. If desired, customers can offset travel emissions. "This option does often come with additional costs and that sometimes falters. It remains a trade-off that only the customer can make. The willingness for more and more often sustainable is there. To pay more for it (yet) not always."

"We are all pursuing the same goal, and that is to fly more sustainably."

Online booking will continue to grow in the coming years, but the personal attention Uniglobe Travel experts offer still plays an important role, according to Koreman. Booking a business trip is substantially different from traveling privately; itineraries can be complex, aside from what destinations require in terms of paperwork. Moreover, their travel experts know their way around the global network, so the traveler benefits from better rates. "The human and interpersonal contact remains important; people want to know who they are doing business with," says Dr. Kane.

Read here Original article from the source: Travel and Tech and here the full issue of the magazine.