BACK-SEAT RIDERS

Although many businesses are starting to travel again, in reality, this is largely domestic with many overseas trips only given the green light if considered 'essential'. However, given the Covid-induced requirements for additional duty of care, ground transportation will play a larger role in getting people from A to B.

Chief revenue officer for chauffeur provider Blacklane, Sascha Meskendahl, sees companies using door-to-door services to transport remote and home workers to the office or offsite locations for regular meetings. “These meetings could also generate new event services, where organisations reserve vehicles by the day to be used for local rides,” he says.

Ground transport could also replace rail and short-haul flights, potentially saving time and money. This has similar advantages to private jet hire, allowing desired departure time, paying per vehicle rather than per person and removing the need to rub shoulders with the rest of the travelling public.

The increasing importance of all things digital in corporate life will also apply to ground transport and apps will bring the convenience of ride hailing to a more structured service. In addition, although some private hire vehicle operators have lost their licence in some cities, “they have, for the most part, made improvements, making ride hailing a viable option. Bringing the right operator into a programme can complement taxi and chauffeur drive”, says head of sales UK for Free Now Jason Dunderdale.

Ground transport booking platform Mozio notes that it is rare for a business to rely on rideshare supplier for all its ground travel because they lack the coverage provided by the major players and are not plugged into other platforms such as airport or rail; reliability in the form of ride cancellations is another drawback.

UBS allows travellers to use rideshare where the bank deems it safe. “Pre-pandemic we were using a large amount of e-hail providers. However, the onboarding process proved complex because they had little flexibility to work off our contractual requirements,” says executive director, regional head of travel EMEA Anne Barlow.

A MATTER OF POLICY
This higher profile role in corporate life has meant ground transport features more prominently in travel policy, where to date it has been neglected, although there is a reason for this, says Barlow: “There has been lots of noise about suppliers’ joining the booking tools of TMCs but little progress,” she says.

“We are finalising our tool for ground transport in the UK for cars and taxis but it will be independent of our booking tools for air, hotel, etc. We have had a booking tool for many years just for UK ground transport but removed it during our current RFP process due to very low volumes and gaining our internal approvals for cloud-based tools,” says Barlow.

For smaller operators, high costs and the need for large-scale technology stand in the way of integration. Mozio sees a move towards aggregators with those channels integrating into larger booking tools. “The downside is that there is a longer chain and more parties generating a profit from one customer,” says Mozio CCO Emil Gustavsson. “However, the same organisations can help larger companies manage the majority of their partnerships.”

TBR Global has developed a booking tool and operating system that manages global bookings and allows bookers to track live a chauffeur location anywhere worldwide. “We are focused only on the premium market and not in-town point to point movements,” says CEO Craig Chambers. “Our system can combine with many platforms, allowing us to accommodate the preferred booking channel of our corporate clients or TMC partners.”

THE GREEN AGENDA
And sustainability is also gaining greater importance. Blacklane will offset emissions from 2016 to its founding in 2011, bridging the gap with its activity from 2017. It offers electric vehicles in more than 20 cities and, in November 2020, took a majority stake in London’s all-electric chauffer-drive service Havn. It has also launched an electric class in London and Frankfurt for scheduled rides. It is aiming for 75 per cent of rides to be in EVs by 2025.

In the last year, the company signed The Climate Pledge, an Amazon-led initiative to meet Paris Climate Agreement 2050 standards 10 years early, and joined Leaders for Climate Action.

The industry is aiming to be carbon free but EVs are still expensive, so increased availability in this sector will happen only slowly. “Meanwhile, aggregation will become extremely important, as businesses may need to work with 20 or more companies to be able to get sufficient EV coverage,” says Gustavsson.  

UBS is heading in this direction: “We are pushing more on sustainability from our suppliers and we have a vision that we will move to a strong percentage of electric vehicles over the next few years,” says Anne Barlow.

The pandemic may have driven a coach and horses through business travel but the outcome is raising demand for taxis and chauffeur drive as an essential part of duty of care.