Technology, in case you haven’t noticed, is EVERYWHERE. Luckily, its 1000 times more helpful than it is in “Black Mirror” and for the business traveller there are certain apps that can make your life an absolute dream.
We’ve decided to give you a heads up on our personal favourites.
Concur
Like everything in life, the perfect business trip starts at the beginning. And what better place to start than Concur.
The ultimate in itinerary planning and booking, Concur is known across every industry for it’s expense capabilities but also for it’s booking app. Concur offers the ability to search, book, track and expense all your travel from within its app. It’s accompanied by a web based offering too if you do want to look up from your phone.
On the back end, it will make life easier for your company as everything sources to one place (so that will keep your boss off your back asking for those expense reports) and we’re all about making life easier (it’s pretty much what we do for a living here!)
Tripcase
Concur not your thing? Tripcase offers the same itinerary management is one slick app.
Keeping tabs on where you are supposed to be is tough when you’re being pulled left, right and centre. No-one wants to end up at the gate packed for the chilly winds of Moscow when you were actually heading for New York in July, and that’s why Tripcase is here to save your day.
There are three great ways of getting your data to the app:
- You can manually enter the details of your trip into the app. Handy, but a slightly longer way round.
- You can e-mail Tripcase and they’ll import it in for you.
- If you book your travel through an affiliated TMC, all the details are immediately available in your app. We loved that idea so much we became affiliated to help our travellers get the most of this app if they want it. (Told you we love making lives easier!)
You can share your travel with others (save that “I told you I was going away” argument for another time!), check important travel docs and keep an overall view of your past trips.
With recently added Alexa support, and awards by the bucketload we think it’s really bloomin’ useful!
Duolingo
If you’re a real International traveller, it can really help to be down on the local lingo. The last thing you want to do is order a tasty chicken salad and end up with the steak instead. Language-learning apps such as Duolingo can help.
Duolingo is a step by step language app that makes learning fun. Utilising streak based rewards and level ups, they’ve done a great job of targeting those of us that love earning points on a good smartphone game. Only this time instead of crushing candy you’re crushing a total new language to help impress your colleagues in the Berlin office.
Best of all, it’s completely free, and it has a forum of thousands of users, so you can get to know others that are on the path to linguistic luminosity.
Google Maps
We realise there are a lot of options for the mapping world we could suggest (Apple Maps, Citymapper etc.), but for us nothing can beat the investment that Google have put into their Maps application.
Google maps is there to provide you with all you need, directions to your next business meeting, recommendations for a good place for lunch (Including reviews, traveller pictures and more) all with a variety of options to give you a great overview of what route is best to take. It’ll even help you book a table – we don’t think you could ask for more really.
Monzo
This one sits expertly on a good call for both business travellers and personal travellers – Monzo is quickly shaping up to be the future of banking, as the Monzo card hosts a wide range of useful features. But in the interest of time, we’ll focus on why you want this for travelling.
Taking away the need to face those horrible exchange rates and fees offered by supermarkets or post offices, Monzo is the debit card you didn’t realise you needed. Acting as a normal debit card, the difference between this and your normal credit and debit cards is this one provides you with a fee free experience and Mastercard’s exchange rate (considered second only to the Interbank rate, which is the rate which is the rate banks use between each other and is considered by most to be the lowest possible rate). In addition, you get instant spending notifications and spend tracking, and if you lose your card you can simply freeze the card in the app and order a new one. It’s the card the experienced business traveller has been waiting for!
For more information on how these apps can link into your travel booking experience, or on how Traveltrust can assist your corporate travel booking needs, contact us today on [email protected]