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Egencia Launches New Self-Service Features for Guest Travellers

Egencia launches new features for guest travellers

5 min
Posted: 28 March 2023
Travelers and Their Guests Talking Casually

Enhanced self-service booking features answer growing demand for guest travel management

London, UK – March 28, 2023 – Egencia, the only proven B2B travel tech platform, and part of American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT), announced new enhancements to its guest traveller features, which provide temporary users or non-profiled travellers with a complete managed travel experience including easy self-service booking and 24/7 emergency support. Invited travellers are now empowered to choose travel options easily and quickly, and companies can get even greater visibility and better policy compliance for these trips.

Bookings made by arrangers for guests and other travellers increased to 33% in 2022 compared to 26% in 2019. With improved self-service features for guest travellers and flexible configuration based on the type of guest, travel arrangers will have more time to focus on other business priorities and less time manually managing non-employee travel.

The Egencia platform offers many benefits for arrangers or guest users:

  • Simple self-service – guests can easily self-register via an invitation link and self-book on the platform and mobile app, giving them easy access to support, trip updates and alerts.
  • Better visibility – guest travellers now get their own profile putting all the information they need in one place, allowing for better travel risk management and visibility through Egencia Traveller Tracker
  • Flexible configuration – profiles are tailored for different levels of access, so customers can choose what services guest travellers can use such as viewing trip itineraries, getting support, or booking travel
  • Time-restricted access – guest accounts have a pre-defined ‘shelf life’, reducing the burden on travel managers when it comes to removing temporary accounts
  • Enhanced security – reduces the risk of fraudulent bookings due to a better guest traveller identification and authentication process

John Sturino, VP Product & Technology, Egencia, said: “With the new world of work, we are seeing changing patterns in the way companies travel. Booking business travel for non-employees of a company is on the rise, whether it is inviting job candidates for face-to-face interviews, onboarding remote employees or bringing in contractors. We have been providing guest travel solutions to our customers for years, and in 2022 we supported more than 800,000 guest trips. To make the booking experience more seamless, we’ve designed a self-service experience to make it even easier and convenient for companies to book travel for their invited guests.”  

Through a pilot in North America and Europe, 20 customers helped influence the new features that are designed to alleviate some of the challenges linked to increased volumes of guest bookings, trip tracking and invitation configuration. While the guest travel solution has been available to customers for years, the new guest traveller features will be available to all Egencia customers by early April, with the majority already using the guest services with high engagement.  

Carol, Logistics Administrator, OSI United Kingdom: “We have seen an acceleration in our need for guest bookings, which has been driven largely by our contractors. Egencia’s new guest features has helped to make the booking process for guest travellers much smoother, mainly because it puts them in control. This allows our business travellers who fall under the guest booking category to get the full travel experience without any unnecessary technical obstacles.”  

Stacy Heck, Global Travel Manager, The Giorgi Companies: “Egencia’s newest guest travel features are invaluable for speeding up the process of making travel arrangements for people outside our organization. For example, we have dozens of staff on temporary project teams who need to travel for overseas training and have candidates that require air tickets for in-person interviews. Now multiple bookings can be made at once and guests can input their own personal information themselves.”

Later this year, Neo, Amex GBT’s online travel and expense solution, will also make enhancements to further streamline its guest booking capabilities. Invited travellers will be able to create their own profile, relieving travel arrangers of this task and giving guests quicker self-service access to the booking tool.

For more information about Egencia and its guest travel management services, visit: www.egencia.co.uk. To learn more about Neo’s guest booking solution, visit: https://www.amexglobalbusinesstravel.com/neo-travel-and-expense/.

About American Express Global Business Travel

American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) is the world’s leading B2B travel platform, providing software and services to manage travel, expenses, and meetings & events for companies of all sizes. We have built the most valuable marketplace in B2B travel to deliver unrivalled choice, value and experiences. With travel professionals in more than 140 countries, our customers and travellers enjoy the powerful backing of American Express Global Business Travel.

About Egencia

Egencia – an American Express Global Business Travel Company – is the only proven, global B2B travel tech platform. Originating from the labs of global tech giants, we deliver the best user experiences, unmatched content, and unbeatable service to more than two million travellers worldwide. As part of the most valuable marketplace in business travel, Egencia is in a league of its own with industry-leading data insights and AI-driven innovation that powers the travel programs of 9000+ companies in more than 60 countries.

Visit amexglobalbusinesstravel.com for more information about Amex GBT, and follow @amexgbt on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Media contacts

Taylor Aaron | Global Communications and Public Affairs | taylor.aaron@amexgbt.com

© 2023 Egencia LLC. All rights reserved.

GBT Travel Services UK Limited (GBT UK) and its authorized sublicensees (including Ovation Travel Group and Egencia) use certain trademarks and service marks of American Express Company or its subsidiaries (American Express) in the “American Express Global Business Travel” and “American Express Meetings & Events” brands and in connection with its business for permitted uses only under a limited license from American Express (Licensed Marks). The Licensed Marks are trademarks or service marks of, and the property of, American Express. GBT UK is a subsidiary of Global Business Travel Group, Inc. (NYSE: GBTG). American Express holds a minority interest in GBTG, which operates as a separate company from American Express.

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