Collaborative economy, sharing economy, or even economy uberization, all are terms quite hard to miss nowadays, as stakeholders of the economy and consumers’ habits are, once again, changing.
In an ever-evolving world, this should be perfectly normal – after all, we have gone from the candle to the light bulb, from the horse to the car, the carrier pigeon to the smartphone… and each time we easily accommodated ourselves to change.
However, things seem to be moving faster this time, perhaps too fast, especially for companies.
Risks for Travel Management
Regarding business travel, there have been so far two conflicting stances in the corporate space. On one hand, the share of employees interested in using the services of companies such as Uber or Airbnb keeps on growing, while on the other hand, a majority of travel managers cautiously remain on the side-lines, and understandably so, as the responsibility of the employees’ safety lies with them.
And, as things currently stand in the collaborative economy, they have many causes for concern indeed: services are not provided from start to finish by professionals for one, and there is no visibility in their quality, especially for accommodations; more importantly, what about insurance? What happens if something goes wrong? Do employees’ insurance policies account for these situations? As a matter of fact, not quite yet. It won’t be long before they do, however, since insurance companies have already begun to realize that collaborative economy isn’t just a new fad in corporate travelling, and that, consequently, it is their entire business model that needs to be reconsidered/revisited.
The opinion of relevant stakeholders
According to figures recently published in a study by the Business Travel Show – a London business travel trade show held at the end of February this year – European travel managers are neither for nor against collaborative economy: in fact, if 26% see it as a threat, 26% also view as an opportunity. In the same vein, 12% of respondents intend to include players of the collaborative economy in their travel policy in the next three years, while 13% have no plan to do so at all.
In the end, is this simply a matter of a glass half empty or half full? Ultimately, this question will arise each time an innovation, a product or a service disrupts our habits: take autonomous vehicles, for example. Now, that’s a subject worthy of a future blog post!
Our solution is dedicated to the moblity management. In addition to the expense reports management you can plan, book and track your business trips. It is also possible to manage your car fleet.
