BCD Travel has been recognised in two major categories at the TDM Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2024 – Asia, as it continues to push the boundaries of travel management and fulfil its vision of becoming the most trusted, innovative, and sustainable travel management company.
It was named the Global Travel Management Company of the Year – Singapore for its innovative solutions for travellers, as well as the Employer of the Year – Singapore for fostering a company culture of collaboration, fun, and service.
Under the Global Travel Management Company of the Year – Singapore category, the company was lauded for its efforts to simplify managed business travel, enhancing its services and capabilities to deliver quality solutions.
In 2023, BCD Travel embarked on a significant modernisation of its Contact Center, integrating blockchain technology, chatbots, machine learning, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things. The investment paid off for the company, streamlining its operations by automating workflows, reducing manual processes, and enhancing business intelligence.
“This move aligns with our ‘Build Forward’ initiative, which aims to drive innovation and simplification, ultimately leading to faster response times, better traveller experiences, cost savings, and improved profitability,” said Andrew Yeo, Managing Director, Australia and Singapore at BCD Travel.
In addition to modernising its Contact Center, BCD Travel has also launched the BCD Marketplace, a platform that allows clients to partner with leading technology providers to create customised travel solutions. All partners in the marketplace are thoroughly vetted to ensure they meet the company’s standards for compatibility and reliability in managed travel programmes.
Amidst the increasing demand for partners with aligned sustainability principles, BCD Travel also developed a Sustainability Framework centred around four key audiences: company, people, business partners, and customers — with guiding principles like Beyond Carbon, Mindful Travel, Industry Advocacy, and High Standards.
“Technological advancements include integrating GATE4 Insights and Total Trip Insights with Concur® Travel and Concur® Expense, enabling customers to optimise their travel programmes whilst reducing carbon emissions,” Yeo added.
Just recently, BCD Travel announced the industry’s first end-to-end sustainability offering for corporate travel programmes.
BCD partnered with SQUAKE, a leading climate-tech company, to streamline carbon emission-related action across the various tools and touchpoints in the travel industry. This allows corporate travel programmes to centrally set targets, decide upon sustainability policies to achieve them, and distribute these across online and offline booking channels for each employee.
The technology provider established tooling to provide active nudging and steering tools within BCD agent frontends and online booking tools (OBTs). The tool encourages travellers to travel less and travel better. In addition to making travellers aware of air, train, hotel, and ground transportation emissions using one of multiple calculation methodologies, the tool displays the carbon cost of each trip.
In addition to driving traveller behaviour change, BCD and SQUAKE will provide carbon budgeting, forecasting, and reporting tools to help clients set and manage carbon targets. This is key to complying with regulatory reporting requirements like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
BCD Travel continues to invest in its AgentSource booking platform as well, allowing agents to book travel directly from an aggregated content platform. With its API-first approach, it supports various travel booking sources and applies client-specific configurations, policies, and payment rules. This reduces training time and offers a user-friendly interface tailored to new generations of employees.
Meanwhile, for the Employer of the Year – Singapore, BCD Travel was awarded for its initiatives that allow teams to cultivate a sense of unity and camaraderie whilst contributing to the success of servicing clients.
BCD Travel provides extensive professional development opportunities, including workshops, seminars, and online courses — on top of a new development directory where employees can easily access resources and plan their career paths.
Understanding the need for work-life balance, the company offers flexible working hours and remote, hybrid, or office work options. It also implemented a Work From Anywhere (WFA) policy, allowing employees to work remotely from a location of their choice for up to 60 days per year.
“As many of our APAC employees are part of a global team with colleagues in other regions, to safeguard our team’s work-life balance, a global encouragement is that meetings are not scheduled for APAC on Monday or Thursday evenings, and on Fridays, we don’t do internal meetings,” the company stated.
Open communication is highlighted throughout the company with regular town hall meetings, Q&A sessions with leadership, monthly engagement surveys, the intranet MySource, and the online community Viva Engage.
BCD Travel’s peer-to-peer recognition platform, ShoutOuts, meanwhile enables employees to show appreciation for each other’s contributions. Additionally, employees can win a trip to Mexico via peer-to-peer nominations.
DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion) lies at the heart of BCD Travel’s DNA. It established local DEI efforts, responding to the needs of its global workforce, which reflected positively with its very high eNPS score of 64.
“We care for our people and our communities alike. Through our Making a Difference initiative, BCD employees across the globe engage in volunteering and fundraising activities for small, targeted projects that directly benefit children in their local communities,” the company added.
TDM Travel Trade Excellence Awards – Asia is a premier awards programme presented by Travel Daily Media. It seeks to honour the pinnacle of excellence in Asia’s travel industry, covering the best hotels, airports, cruise lines, tour operators, travel agencies, booking platforms, and travel technology.
The TDM Travel Trade Excellence Awards 2024 – Asia is presented by Travel Daily Media. To view the full list of winners, click here. For more details, please contact Jane Patiag at +(65) 3158 1386 ext. 217 or awards@traveldailymedia.com.
Comments are closed.