AS emotionally exhausting as dealing with Covid-19 has been, Tobias Ragge, CEO of HRS has still had time to dream of a new and better world of corporate travel which he says has been completely disrupted by the pandemic.
“Entering this stage, travel is completely disrupted,” said Ragge, who took over the reins at the second-generation, family-owned company in March 2008. “It has shown us that while travel is connected, governments are not and our biggest challenge is how to bring the industry back in a safe, coordinated and connected way, with technology and data at the heart of it.”
He is hopeful that September could be the month corporate travel gets back on the road in some shape or other, but he recognises that the challenges over the opening of travel bubbles across the world come down to one thing – a connected and verified personal ID.
“This is such a fundamental crisis but it can bring about a better future if we know how to leverage the changes – for the first time, we can realise the future of digitisation which we have talked about for a long time.”
He sees different players shaping the future, away from the GDS models. “Those monolithic cultures, walled gardens, are a thing of the past. They who don’t own the tech cannot survive.”
Everything needs to be more connected now that everything is happening real time – safety tracking and transmission, trip data, procurement, expense. “For us to deliver a personalised experience, we need a better data ecosystem.”
And no, he doesn’t think the new world will belong to tech giants like Google but a specialised ecosystem – the best breed of suppliers coming together to form what he calls a “dream alliance”.
“Tech giants are coming under so much scrutiny, there is public opinion swelling against it, corporations are careful of handling over their data. With concerns over GDPR and safety, the way tech giants act today will not have a place.”
And here’s how he sees the make-up of the “dream alliance”. “One, we need a digital journey ecosystem – online booking tools, travel booking and expense. Two, we need a holistic solution to payments to reduce fraud and theft. Three, identity management – a personal ID which the traveller owns. Four, risk management.”
And then plugging into this ecosystem are core verticals suppliers – air, lodging, entertainment, he said.
On the issue of identity management, which various organisations are working at – for example, CommonPass and IATA Travel Pass, Ragge said, “Tech giants could do this but there’s a trust element. I don’t see IATA doing it because they are driven by lobbying efforts of airlines, which will hinder them in solving the problem they want to solve. Who knows, maybe Microsoft with its B2B focus (RT1) could be the one?
Where HRS sits is in the vertical of lodging, payments and data.
And what’s needed for such a “dream alliance” to happen is leadership from companies, not industry bodies, he believes.
“Now most organisations are still in survival mode but once that is done, we can take the steps to make it happen. Asia is light years ahead in this transformation.”
The other pressing issue facing corporate travel is sustainability which he compared to “the smoker’s dilemma” – when everyone who is still smoking today does it in stealth and is looked upon as a “addict”.
“Business travel could run into this dilemma if we are not careful. It’s become a societal agenda as to who’s going to net zero emissions, when will next zero happen? There is a huge push from all angles, companies are coming under more scrutiny and potential carbon taxation – this is a big political agenda.”
Said Ragge, “We in travel need to speak about and show that there’s value created by business travel, that we are responsible for Delivering growth through human collaboration and peace through cultural understanding. We need to speak out more because it is becoming an obsession with corporations – after savings and satisfaction, sustainability is third on their agenda.
“This movement will stick. We have different perspectives, different generations. It will lead suppliers to invest and it will change the supplier landscape.”
In March, HRS unveiled its Green Stay Initiative, described as “a first-of-its-kind solution that gives corporations and employees a way to organise business travel more sustainably. Introduced as a pilot in the first quarter of this year, the initiative leverages proprietary technology to give corporate procurement executives, travel planners and travellers “an intuitive system to identify, compare and prioritise hotels” that are helping to reduce the ecological footprint.
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