HRS, the corporate lodging and payment technology provider, has launched HRS Workforce Travel to aid project managers in delivering a seamless experience to their workforce, according to an announcement. Initial clients, said the announcement, are already gaining from specialized procurement, flexible booking processes for employees and contractors and digitized invoice reconciliation. Beyond saving money, said HRS, the platform provides real-time transparency, with automation dramatically reducing the time project managers spend orchestrating each deployment.

Earlier this summer, said the announcement, the Global Business Travel Association published an updated metric on anticipated global travel spend for 2024, putting the figure at an all-time peak of $1.48 trillion. This research also put the spend level associated with crew and workforce travel at 22% of that total — a sum exceeding $325 billion annually.

Given that figure, said the announcement, “it is a remarkable reality that this specialized, non-traditional segment of ‘managed’ travel is so shockingly unmanaged.” For far too many companies — especially those in the vertical markets of construction, energy, media and mining — the lack of modern automation prevents initiatives and visibility that can save significant time and money, said the announcement. A reliance on manual and offline methods for travel arrangements often leads to delays, errors and multiple inefficiencies. Disorderly and misaligned payment and reconciliation practices across projects practically eliminate the possibilities for savings opportunities from lodging suppliers.

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At a time when AI and automated solutions in managed travel are driving notable savings and performance, said the announcement, it is time to lift workforce travel management into the digital age and empower companies in this segment to seize the advantages of data-driven solutions.

According to HRS, specific features and benefits of the platform include:
  • The enablement of enterprise-wide visibility across multiple projects for operations teams, including budget, running costs and real-time KPIs (key performance indicators). Multiple team members can access projects simultaneously on the platform.
  • The platform provides the best options for each group within a project, recommending the top five hotels for expedited decision making. Managers can manually alter preferential options based upon project requirements, prior experiences at a specific property, etc.
  • Automation then enables the booking and payment scenarios for each team with one click. Moreover, the technology monitors bookings across projects to prevent double bookings of teams and/or individuals. Traveler management, communications, booking updates and the exchange of team members — including employers and contractors — is handled easily via an intuitive app and “crew swap” function.
  • Addressing prominent “time-spend” issues, the Workforce Travel platform digitizes processes from end to end, highlighted by payment reconciliation and invoice processing. And with the global scalability HRS offers, clients gain from real-time and historical audit capacity, putting data-driven insights in play that were previously never available in this segment.