Tech Tonic: How Technology Is Helping The Travel Sector Recover From The Impact Of Covid-19

The Covid-19 crisis has significantly impacted the travel and hospitality sectors, and corporate travel in particular.  For most companies, domestic and international business travel has almost come to a standstill.

The pandemic has forced technology providers to look for innovative solutions to address the spectrum of issues that have emerged and find ways to make governments, companies, and travelers feel confident about a safe return to travel. Technology innovations have primarily focused on helping companies, and their traveling employees be aware of and comply with health and safety requirements, providing guidance on the health risks en route and at their destination, and limiting the risk of Covid-19 spread. 

Governments around the world have implemented a raft of measures in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. These include restrictions on cross-border movement, testing and quarantine regulations, limits on gatherings, as well as requiring people to wear masks or face coverings in public. One of the biggest challenges for the travel industry, however, is that these health and safety restrictions can vary widely from one country to the next, and often even within the same country. Through innovative technology solutions, travel management companies are integrating data feeds that monitor local requirements into planning and travel tools for use by companies and travelers. Travelers can have easy access to information on applicable restrictions, procedures, and travel requirements based on their specific travel itinerary details such as trip origin, destination, travel dates, and nationality. With rapidly changing circumstances across countries and an organization’s own health and safety parameters, this helps business travelers and travel arrangers make more informed and timely decisions.

Risk management is another area where technology plays a key role. Companies are looking at making changes to travel policies, such as pre-trip approvals, so they can have greater visibility and control over their employees’ travel. Technology is making the pre-trip approval process more efficient, as well as more robust. At the same time, organizations are seeking curated information that is relevant to their individual travel programs, so they can assess risks and act quickly if needed. Tech-powered solutions are being used to provide up-to-date, relevant COVID risk and travel restriction information amalgamated from multiple sources in a way that makes it easy for companies’ travel and risk management teams to ascertain how prevalent the pandemic is in a given country and how it is trending. When combined with booking data, which is updated in near real-time, this can help shape policy changes and identify trips booked that may require some attention, action, or intervention.

Technology is also being applied to minimize the spread of covid-19by driving contactless engagement.  While the movement towards contactless solutions was underway well before Covid, the pandemic has certainly spurred the speed of development and deployment of these solutions spanning the full journey from reservations to check-in and stay, all the way through checkout and post-travel settlement. 

At the end of the day, it will take a number of factors –not least the development of an effective vaccine – for companies and their employees to feel confident that it’s safe to travel again. But without a doubt, technology will play a key role in making widescale travel in the post-Covid world a reality.