What priority issues is 3mundi working on?
Jordy Staelen - We are paying particular attention to 'blurring', or 'bleisure', the combination of 'business' and 'leisure'. Today, everything is focused on booking, where all the market players are present, completely forgetting what happens around a business trip. Almost none of my customers have an appointment at the airport, and none of them live there... These travellers are subject to recurring stress, which can probably be relieved: will there be a taxi at the station to take them to the airport early in the morning? All our passengers experience this stress, and we want to offer a solution.
So you're thinking of integrating a VTC or taxi solution?
J. S. - It's a possibility, but I don't think an exclusive solution is enough. Ideally, we need to integrate different offers that travellers can, for example, classify in order of preference in their profile, so that they are automatically offered the most rapidly available solution at the time of their departure. We are establishing partnerships, and the first tests have been largely conclusive.
What other aspects of blurring are you working on?
J. S. - The number of possibilities is infinite, both in terms of restaurants, cultural life, outings and heritage. I don't yet know which ones are relevant to business travellers, but I do know that many of them are looking for personal experiences during their business trips.
Why develop this 'leisure' approach within a business offer?
J. S. - For some years now, we have been tugging at the 'comfort' of the business traveller, who is made to travel in the most economically restrictive conditions on the basis of the 'comfort factor'. best buy. And I don't believe in the return of business class and five-star accommodation for all. So we're tiring out the employees, and we can't keep pulling on the rope for too long. So we have to compensate with something else. Until now, we haven't looked at the passenger as such. We were talking primarily to the buyer, the person signing the contract. I think those days are gone. The logistics of people must give way to the experience of users. This is the next major development in the market. As a business travel agency, my role is to keep the company's budget under control as much as possible, but at the same time I don't forget that I'm moving travellers who have needs and desires...
To what extent is this a turning point in the approach developed by 3mundi since its creation?
J. S. - We're continuing with our usual business, and we've also been lucky enough to achieve very good growth in our core business of optimising business travel. So we're not abandoning this mission. It's just that we want to enhance the notion of the traveller experience. Perhaps this will give us a competitive edge. Whatever the case, it will simplify the lives of our end-users. We're no longer talking about customers but about guests, and this completely changes the basic paradigm induced by a customer-supplier relationship. This very human relationship does not exist in business travel. It's our mission to put it back on the agenda, and that doesn't preclude technology or optimisation.
On the contrary, technology can be particularly useful for integrating new functions into your offering...
J. S. - Yes, completely, because we can't ask our teams to know everything. So we have to do a lot of work profiling and synthesising the information provided. It's up to us to sort through the huge amount of data available to provide the right advice at the right time to the right guest. So we're investing heavily in this area.
This phenomenon of blurring is illustrated in particular by the rise of "collaborative consumption". When will Airbnb be integrated into your system, for example?
J. S. - We already work with Airbnb through accounts we've opened with them. It works, but it's not automatic. We have already made dozens, if not hundreds, of reservations via our 3mundi account. It would be interesting to be able to compare Airbnb accommodation with a hotel in real time. To do this, Airbnb would have to open up access to its stock in real time. If they take this decision, we will be the first to connect to this content. Demand is still limited, but it is real. What may have seemed like a new trend last year is now a very real reality, especially as the obstacles we feared, particularly in terms of security, are in the process of being overcome. Today, our integration solutions enable us to geolocate a traveller whether they have booked in an Ibis, a Sheraton or an Airbnb.
What is the future of the Travel Manager profession in this context? Your last White Paper dealt with the subject of career transition...
J. S. - I think the profession needs to evolve. In the 1990s, travel policies were created, accompanied in the 2000s by electronic tools. In 2014, we are ultra-connected on a network system that is no longer at all linear, and which generates a great deal of information, offering many possibilities. The Travel Manager must therefore adapt, talk to his travellers to identify their needs and constraints, and understand what is not working or no longer working in his organisation in order to improve it. If they remain stuck on processes designed ten years ago, their future is over. The Travel Manager demonstrates the value of his role by continually improving the way he operates. You have to constantly question your own organisation in order to adapt it. That's the rule in such a fast-moving world.
Some people are advocating opening up the role of Travel Manager to new areas. What are your thoughts on this?
J. S. - I don't think we should be grasping at straws, trying at all costs to broaden our scope in order to continue to exist. That's not sustainable. On the other hand, the Travel Manager must demonstrate his added value by continually improving to serve his users. The Travel Manager makes it possible to link the company's economic and security constraints to the traveller's need for comfort, which is no longer linked to a booking class but to a balance between professional and personal spheres. It's complex, but that's why it warrants a job. If it didn't, we'd automate it. So the profession has a bright future ahead of it, as long as we don't remain focused on the past.
2014 began with a missed opportunity with Frequent Flyer Travel Paris. Is a tie-up with another market player now on the cards?
J. S. - We are in regular demand. Today, we're lucky enough to be growing fast enough that we don't necessarily need to buy business volume. So we're looking at companies that have interesting technologies that we could apply to business travel.
Interview by Florian Guillemin
