Pana cofounder & CEO Devon Tivona
"You're great at a niche and [solving] an area that's really needed for nonemployees and invitees," said Norm Rose, judging in the final round of BTN's Innovation Faceoff. That was music to the ears of Pana co-founder & CEO Devon Tivona, who launched his company in 2014 and has pivoted more than once to find the right fit in the managed travel ecosystem. The only thing that could make it better? The audience at Innovate came to the same conclusion as the judges, voting "overwhelmingly" to name Pana as the 2019 People's Choice, according to BTN Group executive director of conference content and strategy David Meyer.
What Does Pana Do, Exactly?
Even in a well-managed travel program, the process for booking and reimbursing travel for job candidates, contractors, meeting attendees, speakers and other guests usually differs from employees. It often requires human resources managers or administrative assistants to act as part-time travel agents, but without the professional tools. Long email chains among a travel coordinator, the guest and maybe a travel management company get untenable. Payment and reconciliation can be a mess. Worse, guests themselves may not quite know what's expected from the process.
The result, said Tivona during his Innovate pitch last month, is "a brand-risking experience because this is the first time your guests are traveling for your company, and they are seeing all of this messy back and forth in your travel arrangement." Pana steps in to clean that up with a platform that handles booking, service, payment and reconciliation. The goal, he said, is to make guest travel simple and efficient for companies while improving the guest travel experience.
Pana uses an "automation engine" that takes trip choices out of the traveler's hands, according to Tivona. It also puts the Pana agents in play to take most of the trip support out of the host company's hands.
The platform incorporates conditions like the traveler's hierarchal position (e.g. executive versus intern), the route, location, trip length, travel policy and other conditions to determine which options are approved to book and also the best options for travelers, like the best airport for arrival or the best hotel for executives. "It's answering thousands of traveler questions about those decisions in seconds," said Tivona.
If there is a delay within the trip, Pana automatically reaches out to the traveler and notifies the company of the late arrival. Throughout the trip, the traveler receives proactive guidance and can send questions via text, email or Pana's mobile app and receive an answer in less than five minutes from Pana's 24/7 travel agent support team, Tivona said. Reimbursement is similarly simplified. Travelers snap a photo of meal or incidental receipts and upload to the app; they receive the funds within 24 hours.
Pana hangs onto guest traveler data for a couple of months in case they are invited back to the company for another interview or engagement. Otherwise, the data is purged according to GDPR regulations.
Expanding Use Cases
In the last two years, the company has expanded its use cases, from handling onsite interview travel in 2017 to new hire trainings, interns and corporate visitors like consultants in 2018 to simple meetings, contractors and VIP travelers in 2019, Tinova said. Today, Pana counts more than 150 enterprises as clients, including biopharmaceutical and technology companies.
Pana partners with travel management companies, allowing travel managers to integrate Pana with their existing programs. "You can get your get your negotiated air and hotel rates, your existing duty of care solution, your centralized reporting and your price assurance tracking without any additional work for you," he said. It was one of BCD Travel's first SolutionSource partners.
Pana's team employs over 150 agents around the world and equips them with proprietary dashboards loaded with client travel policies, a chat system and a customer relationship management tool. Both domestic and international travel are supported 24/7.
"It's been fantastic over the last four years building a business, getting to know this community and understanding how we can add value. We're here to help travelers and to make travel more about why you are going and less how you get there."
—Dawit Habtemariam
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Judges' Honorable Mentions
Bizly: Bizly's latest iteration started with three years of listening, not only to travel and event managers but also to a variety of stakeholders including administrative assistants, TMCs, human resources, sales and marketing, vendors and suppliers on what their pain points were and what they wanted in an event planning solution. The result is a highly customizable and collaborative platform dubbed Bizly 2.0 by founder and CEO Ron Shah.
Shah pitched the solution's multiple event templates alongside its customizable users models. He demonstrated the tool's ability to synchronize event stakeholders in real time and how it automates project management. With Bizly 2.0, users create guest lists and invites, house communications, do sourcing, put in room blocks and more. In search, Bizly will take the preferred hotel program, group preferences, group size and give the top three options, dynamically. The software then bundles the event together, so the planner can compare options. Plus, Shah said, it's intuitive for the occasional user.
"If you can use a smartphone, you can use this," he said, adding that the analytic capabilities were extensive, and Bizly can integrate with other systems via friendly APIs.
"We were very impressed at the obvious time spent collecting feedback, hearing from the market, hearing from all sides," said judge Kurt Knackstedt. "We really don't see that enough in the industry. And the little things, like the project management piece, it's not just about focusing on one part of the meeting, like sourcing or attendee registration, but [understanding] the entire plan that goes along with it."
—Donna M. Airoldi
HRS Invisible Pay: Maximilian Waldmann's Conichi won BTN's Innovator of the Year in 2016. Since then, hotel solutions company HRS acquired the company, took the best of what Conichi offered, added to it, and unveiled its latest payment platform, Invisible Pay, at this year's Innovate. The product enables advanced payment automation for hotel stays and aims to provide a two-click solution for travelers, thereby reducing the friction in the booking, payment and expense process, and easing traveler check-in/check-out.
When a traveler using HRS books a hotel (click one), Invisible Pay will create a virtual card and guarantee that it will be accepted at the front desk. At the end of the stay, the traveler can split the invoice by easily adding another card for ancillary purchases, if they wish. HRS then collects the invoice to ensure it is correct and forwards it into the expense tool. The traveler acknowledges the expense receipt (click two), and they're done.
"The beauty of Invisible Pay is it works with all the leading OBTs and leading payment tools," said Waldmann, who is now HRS's COO of Invisible Pay. "All the companies have to do is tell us what their preferred tool is, the preferred payment provider, and we'll take care of the rest."
This platform "shows great vision" and a "streamlined experience," said Innovate judge Steve Clagg. "There are a ton of benefits, in both the savings and the improved traveler experience. It sends a very strong message, and I think everyone wants to do away with those painful hotel payment experiences." One caution noted by the judges was the sustainability of the model, which Waldmann said includes a large number of "boots on the ground" to ensure the program works seamlessly at the hotel front desk.
—Donna M. Airoldi
Tripbam: Tripbam is another past BTN Innovator of the Year, from 2014. The company's newest feature took aim at the annual hotel RFP process. Tripbam now leverages its hotel intelligence tool to find locations where there is opportunity for savings with sourced hotels. It will identify high-performing hotel candidates—according to Tripbam's proprietary grading system—and target them for the buyer. If acceptable, the travel manager loads their room nights and volume, Tripbam calculates the target rate for the market and sends an email to the hotel with an "accept" or "reject" option. If accepted, rates automatically load, while Tripbam systematically audits and tracks hotel performance against availability and rate.
Tripbam has tested the feature with 10 clients. Of the 51 offers sent, 74 percent were accepted. "There was no haggling, no back and forth, [the hotel] just said yes, clicked the button and it was accepted," said co-founder and CEO Steve Reynolds. If the hotel rejects the offer, it has an opportunity to say why, and the client can choose to resubmit.
Further, Tripbam can notify travelers there is a new preferred hotel in the system and automatically rebook them to the new property. That's an option Reynolds called Smart Share Shift.
One drawback noted by the judges was that the tool is designed to work with one hotel at a time; buyers cannot bulk upload hotel targets for a larger sourcing effort. Even so, the judges saw major benefits. "What you have given us is this view of every bit of information we need to know," said judge Cindy Heston. "So when we do push that offer out, we're knowledgeable and not coming across as trying to undercut [the hotel]. The whole beginning to end scope was brilliant, and the other thing I love is the instant value. That's pretty paramount."
—Donna M. Airoldi
The Competition
30SecondsToFly: "The main problem with TMCs is that they rely on a workforce which is old, difficult to find, not tech-savvy, difficult to train and expensive," said 30SecondsToFly CEO and cofounder Riccardo Vittoria, pitching chat-bot Claire, which has pivoted from its original end-user focus in 2016 to a new agency-focused platform today.
The basics are similar: Claire uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to "deeply understand who the traveler is and what he wants," Vittoria said, as it interacts via text with the traveler. The platform pulls in the company's travel policies, the traveler profile and corporate negotiated rates; it asks about the traveler's personal preferences and pushes relevant bookable options to the end user. Yet a service-oriented agent enabled with Claire also has access to these interactions and can step in whenever needed. Simultaneously, the AI studies the human interactions to improve future automations.
Innovate judges appreciated the efficiency Claire provides to agents, freeing them to focus on complex trip issues. They loved one end-user feature: Claire's availability on Slack, Facebook Messenger and SMS. However, given the crowded landscape for chat-bots, the judges questioned whether Claire could differentiate itself.
—Dawit Habtemariam
BCD Travel: Travel management company BCD Travel in October launched its SolutionSource Developer Hub, which allows third-party developers access to the company's core application programming interfaces, enabling them to build custom solutions for the company's corporate clients, said Irina Matz, senior director of BCD's SolutionSource.
Authorized third-party developers can visit developer.bcdtravel.com and access BCD's APIs to see available data, code or existing tech for a variety of functions: shopping and booking capabilities, itinerary information, traveler profile information and policy rules. The idea is to drive deeper integrations and more advanced functions, said Matz. For example, "It can be used to better automate some of the price assurance products for better shopping and rebooking capabilities, or it can power data analytics platforms to improve the traveler experience end to end," she said.
The judges applauded BCD on its open platform and ecosystem to allow third parties to participate in its systems and encouraged the company to continue down that path. However, they asked about expense tools and end payment options, which Matz said would be coming in the near future.
—Donna M. Airoldi
Cornerstone: Cornerstone VP of product and marketing Jorge Alvarez presented his company's new product, PoliSee, a traveler behavior nudging tool, which will be launched in the first quarter of next year. PoliSee collects booking data through numerous API integrations, analyzes the data to find opportunities where travelers can book in-policy or make better booking decisions and then deploys these nudges as informational labels, tips and scorecards on booking tools, browser via web extension or email.
Cornerstone demonstrated three types of nudges: education, anchoring, and social/trend. Education explains why travelers should make a decision. Anchoring shows traveler choices compared to an optimized choice; social/trend focuses on popular options within their company. Over time, the nudge technology learns individual traveler behavior and how to influence it, according to Alvarez.
"Everyone knows how hard it is to nudge people in the right direction if they [have] a preferred airline, preferred hotel or a conference," said Rose. The judges concluded it's too early to determine PoliSee's efficacy, since the product just launched, but commended its innovation potential.
—Dawit Habtemariam
Nina & Pinta: Nina & Pinta partner Jo Lloyd presented an interactive air data dashboard. Lloyd said the dashboard brings simplicity, transparency and insight into air programs and reaches down into the small- and midmarket with self-serve capabilities. The tool drills into contract usage by country, city pair, points of sale, carrier, amenities, fare class and more. Travel managers, she said, can have the same data that airlines have but in a consolidated format across all carriers, "which, in turn, gives you the ability to punch above your weight," in negotiations.
Travel managers can upload contracts in any file format and see their spend commitments, contract overlap, points of sale, top city pairs and fair market share. They can compare, rank and filter contracts by various details like point of sale and route. Data aggregators can feed out-of-channel data to the tool, Lloyd said.
The tool's user interface and ability to reduce air RFP complexity impressed the judges. The lack of modeling was a miss, however; and judges questioned the tool's positioning in a crowded field, citing a growing TMC and consulting company focus on air analysis.
—Dawit Habtemariam
PredictX: Big Data analytics provider PredictX pitched its air sourcing tool, PredictX Navigator, in a back-to-back pitch with Nina & Pinta. PredictX director of product Simon Carmouche presented.
PredictX Navigator automates sourcing research and dynamically evaluates contracts. On the one hand, Navigator pulls in booking data from 85 different sources, including NDC. On the other, it accepts air contracts in multiple file formats.
The tool evaluates and compares proposed and existing contracts against routes and pricing. It measures program performance and quality against market benchmarks, forecasts demand and simulates the impacts of shifts in pricing and market share. PredictX focuses on enterprise clients.
The judges were impressed with Navigator's ability to aggregate content from multiple sources. They also liked the tool's what-if scenario modeling but noted the air analytics space is very crowded and complicated, making product differentiation difficult. Carmouche timed out on the pitch, but the good news is the judges wanted to hear more.
—Dawit Habtemariam
Traxo: Traxo pitched Connect for SME, as solution for data capture and reporting for lightly managed, small and midsize programs. Sales VP Chad Costa presented.
Connect filters and parses travel confirmation emails via an email server rules integration. The tool captures travel data from thousands of booking sources, then organizes it into a dashboard for travel managers. "With a press of button, they can find out where travelers are or where they are going before, during or after a trip," said Costa. He emphasized the duty of care function, but also noted access to other data details like the booking source, supplier, spend, etc.
Innovate judges lauded Connect's ability to aggregate off-channel data and noted that reporting on such bookings was critical for all programs. However, they said, many travel programs already get off-channel booking data from expense systems. On the technical side, judges were concerned with getting approval for an email rules integration; they also remarked on distinguishing between leisure and corporate confirmations, which opened issues around employee privacy.
—Dawit Habtemariam
TripActions: Tech-forward TMC TripActions' Innovate pitch focused on its agent technology TravelXen, which gives agents access to a traveler's trip frequency, travel policy, contact information, booking preference data and existing reservation details. It enables agents to provide proactive support and make changes to the traveler's booking, regardless of the content source, according to TripActions VP of enterprise sales Michael Sindicich, who handled the pitch.
Sindicich also showcased TripActions' Trust & Transparency Center, which provides TMC performance data across its client base on average time to book a trip, time to reach a live agent, average hotel savings and traveler satisfaction. He showed off TripActions' administrative dashboard, Next Generation Storefront display on the booking tool and New Distribution Capability content. Basically, the works.
TripActions counts about 3,000 customers, most of which are small and midsize enterprises. The judges commended the company for offering a strong agent and traveler experience. However, they questioned whether TripActions can keep up with its fast growth, whether it can continue to aggregate different content sources and be scalable up to the enterprise level, which has been the company's stated ambition.
—Dawit Habtemariam
TroopTravel: Meeting destinations often are selected based on the meeting owner's personal preferences, even if that means the event might cost more than it needs to. TroopTravel aims to change that and offers a solution that uses hundreds of data points not only to select the most cost-efficient location to meet, but also can take the event's carbon footprint into consideration.
Co-founders Dennis Vilovic and Leonard Cremer presented a case study of an event for 300 people from 35 locations, where 60 attendees were based in Chicago. Some people might think Chicago would be the obvious choice, but once the travelers' destinations were input into TroopTravel, the tool determined that Boston was the optimal meeting location, saving the client more than $70,000.
Even with 50 more people staying in hotels, choosing Boston meant fewer attendees were eligible to fly business class based on the company's travel policy, thereby reducing both costs and the carbon footprint.
The judges praised TroopTravel for taking complicated factors and transforming them into a simplified "choose" experience. However, they noted some factors missing, including the big one of taking into account negotiated rates. They also recommended involving meetings procurement compliance into the product.
—Donna M. Airoldi
US Bank: US Bank's Expense Wizard application was created with corporate travelers in mind. The product not only pushes a virtual corporate card directly into a traveler's mobile wallet, but it also keeps track of traveler expenses and builds an expense report in real time using AI technology, said US Bank's VP and product manager Laretha Hulse. It can be used for both frequent and infrequent travelers, and employees as well as candidates.
Travelers can use the mobile pay option for merchants that accept it, and for those that don't, they can add their purchase as an out-of-pocket expense. The app converts it and adds it to the report. "The manager still has compliance control and visibility into all of the spend, even if [the traveler] used their own money to pay for the expense," Hulse said. The product currently is available in the U.S. and is expected to expand to Canada next year.
Innovate judges thought the focus on virtual cards and the mobile wallet was headed in the right direction. Targeting non-employees was also a strength. However, they were concerned that even though Expense Wizard complements the players already in expense management, it also competes on some levels, which could be a challenge for adoption.
—Donna M. Airoldi