Solving business travel friction is key to policy compliance and efficiency

A seamless business travel programme isn’t just a luxury; it’s a competitive advantage, keeping your business and travellers moving.

Yet, GBTA research reveals that travel managers continue to face recurring friction points that impact compliance and efficiency. These include everything from poor booking experiences and increased programme leakage to difficulty managing booking changes and a lack of integration across systems.

At Corporate Travel Management (CTM), we’ve developed a comprehensive suite of innovative tools designed to remove these pain points. Built with the end-user in mind, our platform evolves with the needs of our customers, ensuring that travel programmes remain efficient, compliant and fit for purpose.

Here’s how CTM’s integrated technology ecosystem addresses business travel friction.

Simplifying the online booking experience

No one wants a clunky user experience. From managing unprofiled guest travel to tracking unused tickets and navigating fragmented global content, clunky online booking tools can create unnecessary business travel friction, pushing travellers to book outside of your programme, leaving you with lost savings and the duty of care challenges.

Friction points:

• Booking for unprofiled guest travellers
• Travel management servicing process
• Manage unused tickets
• Access to global content

CTM solutions

CTM offers flexible, tailored solutions to simplify the online booking experience and reduce common pain points.

Lightning, CTM’s proprietary online booking tool, allows you to easily book for up to nine guest travellers in one transaction with no profile setup required. This makes it fast and hassle-free to manage unprofiled or ad-hoc guest travel, a common source of inefficiency.

To improve financial oversight, detailed booking data feeds directly into CTM’s Data Hub for fast, accurate reporting and travel spend tracking. Lightning also helps you manage the full lifecycle of travel credits, automatically applying eligible unused tickets at checkout to avoid wasted value.

Access to CTM’s global travel content, backed by strong supplier partnerships, ensures travellers see competitive air, hotel and car rental options, with flexibility and value-adds to enhance the experience. By prioritising usability and flexibility, CTM removes the barriers that prevent travellers from booking in-policy, delivering a consistent and productive booking experience across every channel.

Improving integration between systems

When travel systems don’t talk to each other, it leads to servicing delays and a fragmented user experience. Poor integration between TMCs, OBTs, reporting, risk and expense tools can hinder efficiency, restrict access to modern content and chew up valuable time for both travel managers and travellers alike.

Friction points

• TMC process inefficiencies
• Poor integration between TMCs and technology tools
• Limited access to NDC fares

CTM solutions

CTM’s ecosystem is fully integrated by design. Unlike third-party booking tools, Lightning connects to the entire CTM service suite, including mobile apps, policy approvals, support services, and data analytics. This removes friction and eliminates the need to jump between platforms. CTM Portal serves as a single access point to manage the full travel lifecycle, while CTM’s NDC-enabled technology allows customers to search and book available NDC fares the same as traditional content.

Importantly, CTM takes an agnostic approach to sourcing the best technology for our customers, not a one-size-fits-all approach. While Lightning is a popular booking tool choice for many customers, we also support and integrate with a wide range of third-party OBTs to suit your specific requirements, as well as expense management solutions. No matter your travel programme’s needs or preferences, CTM ensures your business has access to the functionality and features you need, delivered through a seamless, integrated tech stack that includes mobile, approvals, traveller tools and reporting.

Increasing policy compliance

We understand the challenges travel managers face when bookings are made outside of preferred channels, impacting duty of care, supplier agreements, data visibility, and your ability to manage travel spend effectively.

Friction points:

• Air leakage
• Hotel leakage

CTM solutions

Booking leakage often happens when travellers feel overwhelmed by too many options, can’t easily find what they need, or don’t see the value in using the approved tool. If content feels irrelevant or overly complex, travellers may look elsewhere outside of the programme for a faster or more familiar experience.

CTM solves this with Lightning’s intelligent, customisable filtering system that simplifies the booking process. By tailoring the display to show relevant, in-policy options and contracted supplier rates, Lightning reduces content overload and guides users to the right choices quickly. The result? Travellers spend less time searching and are less likely to book elsewhere.

This is further supported by CTM Approve, which enforces policy through pre-trip approval workflows, flagging or preventing bookings that don’t align with programme objectives. Also, Fare Forecaster – found in the CTM Portal – can quickly help bookers and travellers find the cheapest day and time to fly.

To drive adoption, CTM’s account management and supplier relations teams work closely with customers to secure competitive rates with preferred airlines and hotels, and also source content from low-cost carriers and last-minute hotel inventory, offering a wide choice of content that travellers want to book. Combined with omni-channel booking access (online, mobile, offline or chat), this creates a seamless, traveller-friendly experience that supports compliance without compromise.

Managing travel disruption

Unforeseen disruptions can significantly impact business operations and traveller safety. Proactive management of these disruptions is crucial to maintaining traveller confidence and ensuring duty of care obligations are met.

Friction points

• Proactive disruption management
• Risk management and duty of care capabilities
• Cancellations and changes

CTM solutions

CTM Risk Hub serves as a centralised platform providing real-time global travel advice. It offers interactive global maps and itinerary-based trip searches, delivering up-to-date information on visa requirements and travel risks, etc. This tool empowers travel managers to make informed decisions, ensuring traveller safety and compliance with company policies. And when you need to make those last-minute changes, Scout, CTM’s AI-powered virtual travel assistant, allows customers to modify or cancel travel plans within seconds.

Risk alerts are an automated dispatch solution that keeps travellers informed of developing travel risks via SMS or email. We even send alerts to individual travellers when their flight is delayed or cancelled. In cases of cancellation, auto-rebook functionality is available. By matching travellers with potential risks based on their geographic location and pre-determined risk ratings, it enables timely notifications, allowing for swift action in response to emerging threats.

CTM Mobile enhances traveller support by providing access to itineraries, real-time travel alerts, and expert assistance, all from the convenience of a mobile device. Features include effortless booking on the go, real-time flight notifications, the ability to search past alerts for critical flight information and direct communication with dedicated travel consultants, ensuring travellers are well-supported throughout their journey.

Say goodbye to business travel friction and hello to efficiency

CTM’s proprietary technology stack isn’t just a collection of tools, it’s a purpose-built ecosystem designed to make corporate travel easier, safer and more cost-effective. By addressing the key friction points, we help our customers create seamless, scalable travel programmes that deliver results.

Whether it’s smarter booking with Lightning, enhanced safety through Risk Hub, streamlined expense visibility via Data Hub, or improved compliance with CTM Approve, our tools work together to support a stronger, more efficient travel experience