Neu-Isenburg, 07/09/2017
New AirPlus White Paper sheds light on development of travel management // Is consumerization the future of business travel management? China takes a different approach
AirPlus International, leading global provider of payment and billing solutions for business travel, published today its new White Paper on the future of travel management: “Fusion Travel Management – Merging Eastern innovation with Western practice”.
Western business travel managers have had to face increasingly tough challenges in the past because of “consumerization”, while China has been developing trendsetting innovations. China’s clear stance to recent developments has resulted in numerous mobile solutions for the booking and payment of business travel, which people in the West have been searching for in vain up to now. For AirPlus the future of global travel management lies in fusion travel management – the merging of skills from Asia and the Western world.
“Due to its historical development, China is in a position to manifest its mobile first approach also in the field of travel management,” said Patrick W. Diemer, Chairman of the AirPlus Board. “In doing so they create process standards for booking and payment that far better serve the needs and wishes of the Next Generation than Western solutions have up to now. That does not mean, though, that both regions will develop separately from each other.”
East + West = The Best
In its latest White Paper AirPlus forecasts that instead of development running in parallel, there will be a merge to fusion travel management. This will bring together the best of Asian mobile innovation with the tried and tested disciplines of the West like cost transparency and risk management. “It should not be our aim to adapt or blindly adopt good approaches and innovations,” Diemer pointed out. “Instead we also want to pursue and promote innovative AirPlus developments. To do this we analyze what the West can learn from the East and vice versa. From Asia, we can learn a great deal about the user friendliness of apps, for example. We must, however, not neglect data transparency for cost control and not least for cost reduction. That is one aspect in which the Asian can learn from Western Travel Management.”
The White Paper “Fusion Travel Management – Merging Eastern innovation with Western practice” is available here.