Travel Vitals, a one-stop source of information for smarter, more secure travel was recently launched by American Express Global Business Travel to serve as an information hub for travellers, travel managers, and management companies.
The platform is set up to provide information before, during, and after a business trip. Data is collated from various sources and presented in a way that makes it easy for users to search travel guidelines based on certain criteria such as destination, airport, airline, hotel chain, ground transportation services, and train operator.
For GBT travelers and clients, Travel Vitals drives itinerary-centric information through digital channels such as the Amex GBT chat, mobile app, and online booking tools.
The free journey assistant provides information and updates related to Covid-19 by showing travel restrictions for particular locations, identifying the hotbeds of infections, as well as spikes in Covid-19 infection rates.
For travel managers, Travel Vitals is incorporated into the trip audit process. It works by activating alerts when journeys are booked to high-risk locations.
Also, the platform is fully accessible to travel counsellors, allowing them to answer calls and messages from different parts of the world, while they contribute to the improvement of local information in real-time.
According to Mark McSpadden, the vice president for product strategy and experience at GBT, “Trip information is going to be central to building trust and confidence. We have to quickly aggregate relevant data in a world in which guidance changes daily. It’s dynamic, and we’re updating it daily. Given the fluidity of the situation, we can only be as up to date as the information available. For that reason, we welcome additional validated sources. But we are doing this because for the foreseeable future, we have to manage every trip as if we were planning an event. Door-to-door travel management has long been an aspiration for our industry, but that is not enough in these circumstances.”
The hub’s reporting capabilities ensure that future bookings are monitored thereby assisting with policy compliance in situations where ground options or hotel stays are not booked together with air travel.
Equally, these reports track booking history, which is vital if it becomes necessary to trace an individual’s movement retrospectively as a result of a spike in infection rates at a particular location.
