Business travel tech startups to watch: TripStax
If I said the words travel technology to you, what springs to mind? Booking.com? Uber? TripAdvisor? But what about business travel technology? In 2022, the UK’s business travel sector was valued at £27.5 billion, and around 9 million Brits travel on business every year, so, it’s an important question as the tech impacts not only the travellers, but also the corporates and travel management companies responsible for managing their trips and keeping them safe.
And, when it comes to the world of startups, business travel is an exciting place to be. Four top business travel technology startups – Lumo, TripStax, Zenmer and DwellOptimal – will be taking part in the Business Travel Innovation Faceoff Europe 2024 at Business Travel Show Europe from 19-20 June at ExCeL, London.
Jack Ramsey, CEO, TripStax
What do you do?
TripStax is a modular stack of ten proprietary business travel management technologies (Profile, Content, Hotels, QC, Portal, Approve, Docs, Mobile, Track, Analytics) powered by the TripStax Core, an unrivalled data-processing powerhouse. The Core consumes, normalises, and enriches booking, profile and finance data from any content source. It provides a single point of truth for all data and ensures the clean, accurate flow of that data to any TripStax module or third-party technology.
What problem does your innovation solve?
TripStax QC (Quality Control) is an additional module within the TripStax eco-system.
Quality control is fundamental to every TMC’s service offering to ensure agency processes meet expected operational standards, corporate client requirements and service levels. Historically, all TMC QC mechanisms require every booking to be in a PNR within the GDS regardless of booking channel. Agencies must therefore undertake time-consuming anachronistic workflows to convert online and offline non-GDS bookings into the PNR to perform vital checks for each traveller’s booking.
TripStax QC frees agency process from this need. Data from any content provider is received within The TripStax Core in its original format; integrated with the QC module; and processed according to defined criteria. Configured logic sequences and rules automatically correct errors. Booking data is processed and pushed to the next workflow without agent interaction. If a booking fails certain criteria, TripStax QC provides the environment for agents to easily fix the failure. It automates manual tasks, creates workflows that were previously impossible and frees up agents to better service customers, meaning real efficiency gains for TMCs.
What are the benefits to travellers and organisations with travellers?
Corporates’ needs have evolved meaning type and volume of quality control checks per booking have become much greater. Yet TMCs are still relying on systems to perform quality control checks that have not kept pace with change. TripStax QC represents a step-change in capability, meaning TMCs can unpick their reliance on GDS-centric architecture and take advantage of a new era to transform their operations, ultimately improving service delivery to corporates and their travellers.
What are your plans for future growth?
We will continue to innovate and create products which serve the ever-growing needs of TMCs and corporates.
What will it mean to you to win the Innovation Faceoff at Business Travel Show Europe?
It would be a major endorsement that our focus on data management as the driver for much-needed technology evolution in our industry is paying off.
