Roadmap, the self-styled all in one ‘best travel app in the world’, will make leisure travel better by solving the pain points experienced by the corporate traveller.
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WTM 2015: Offer more than just the value of the ticket, says travel app Roadmap
Roadmap, the self-styled all in one ‘best travel app in the world’, will make leisure travel better by solving the pain points experienced by the corporate traveller.
Jeroen van Velzen, chief executive of Roadmap, said the frequency of travel in the corporate sector means it has the most issues and therefore the most scope for the firm.
“We are shifting focus from leisure to corporate because the frequent traveller has the most pain points. Once those are solved that will flow back into leisure travel,” he told the WTM Innovation Summit.
Van Velzen accused the travel industry of failing to care about the customer experience once the product has been sold and the money is in the bank.
He said: “The value of travel is not in the ticket. The value is what you or I as a customer are getting out of that ticket.”
Van Velzen said the industry was today only scratching the surface of what is possible in terms of personalising the service and improving the experience for customers.
He said despite the current proliferation of devices the long term trend was towards people spending less time looking at screens and more time experiencing reality, so the opportunities for travel firms to deliver their message to potential customers would be diminishing.
There are billion dollar companies being created today based on less than 15 seconds screen per day time by users. This means it will be vital to use data to determine intent, said van Velzen.
“Find ways to use the least amount of screen time, especially when travelling because I don’t want to look at screens when travelling I want to enjoy the surroundings,” he said.
The world is moving to a situation in which people are talking to machines like Amazon’s Echo which listens to out requests and involves no screens. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s going to happen, but it’s when and what it [this technology] is going to do with us. It merges beautifully with our desire not to look at our screens. We fall in love with the digital experience but what we crave is this frictionless experience.
“As travellers we want to be nudged in the right direction. That means ergo from useful experiences to meaningful experiences.”
