Egencia launches Egencia® TripNavigator for iPhone

SYDNEY, SHANGHAI, and DELHI - Egencia®, the business travel brand of the Expedia group, announced the worldwide launch of Egencia® TripNavigator, a "smart travel companion" app for business travellers. Egencia TripNavigator improves travellers' in-trip experiences by displaying a contextual, actionable view of the itinerary and integrating real-time trip alerts to reduce friction as travel plans change, expectedly or unexpectedly.

"Consumer brands have set a high bar with leisure travel apps that travel management companies, like Egencia, need to meet in order to drive sustained use of corporate travel apps," says Rob Greyber, President of Egencia. "Egencia TripNavigator brings the best consumer travel experience to the enterprise user, serving as a must-have mobile travel assistant with integrated access to Egencia Customer Service when help is needed."

As mobile adoption grows around the world, corporate travellers are turning to their smartphones and tablets for help. In fact, a recent Future of Travel survey from Expedia® and Egencia found that 18-30 year-olds are far likelier than 46-65 year-olds to consider mobile devices to be central to their travel experience.

"According to the Egencia Future of Travel survey, today in APAC, 82 percent of business travellers are using a smartphone or tablet for travel purposes," said Kyle Davis, Egencia's Managing Director for APAC. "Many leisure travellers have already adopted self-booking through a device and we wanted to deliver the same, easy, intuitive process for booking business travel on their smartphone."

With a consumer-grade interface, Egencia TripNavigator incorporates technology from the Expedia brand's acquisition of Mobiata®, a creator of best-selling mobile travel apps, with a design that has been optimized for the more complex world of business travel. Developed with feedback from Egencia customers, the app provides travellers with step-by-step navigation, much like a GPS device offers driving directions, and features, among other things, access to Egencia's robust global inventory of hotels.

Egencia TripNavigator provides a clear and interactive view of the traveller's current trip by delivering relevant information based on the trip timeline. TripNavigator calls out important information and the next logical action a traveller should take next.

For example:

It is time to check-in for your flight and a check-in action;
A hotel has not yet been booked for your trip with an option to book a hotel now;
Remember to fill up your rental car including an interactive map to guide a user to nearby gas stations;
Your flight is delayed or cancelled along with actions to book a new flight or a room at a local hotel; and
A major event (with details) is impacting your travel plans and options to connect with an Egencia Travel Consultant.
According to the Global Business Travel Associations' quarterly outlook report, companies and individuals will spend more than $1 trillion on business trips in 2013—the most ever, and rising in the years ahead. As more employees travel, navigating change throughout their trips remains constant: gate changes, flight delays or cancellations, extended trips or shortened trips.

Egencia TripNavigator is available to Egencia clients from Egencia apps on the iOS platform. Egencia will deliver this functionality in native app format for Android phones in early 2014. Any user, including non-Egencia clients, can download the app and take it for a test drive via the "Explore" option available on the "Sign In" screen.

Sourced: TravelDailyNews