Why switch to Lightning for your online travel booking tool?

Every modern travel program needs an online travel booking tool, but they’re not all created equal. While some offer a basic booking function that ticks a box, the overall experience can leave travellers frustrated with slow interfaces, unintuitive workflows, and limited content that leaves money on the table.

At Corporate Travel Management (CTM), we knew there had to be a better way to improve the travel booking experience and help our clients save money. That’s why we designed Lightning – to bring speed, savings, sustainability, and simplicity to the business travel booking experience.

Gain more hours in the day

Travellers have more to do in their day than book travel, so a tool that is fast and efficient is often desired. Lightning’s user-friendly, modern interface enables travellers to book travel in 90 seconds, with fewer clicks than other booking tools. At-a-glance details that break down each fare type and cabin class, show if it’s refundable, or apply a ticket credit, to give travellers exactly what they need to make the best choice.

Lightning also reduces repetitive tasks by letting Travel Arrangers book up to 9 travellers in one transaction. With baggage add-ons and loyalty status recognition at time of booking, Lightning eliminates time spent going back to an airline’s website, keeping your people in the right booking channel for payment, duty of care, and data reporting.

A frequent challenge with other online travel booking tools and technology is that they can be slow to make updates or add new features. Lightning is an agile product that runs on two-week development cycles that regularly integrate customer feedback into new feature development and customisations. Other TMCs may have to petition for changes in third-party tools, whereas Lightning’s priorities and roadmap are directly driven by our clients.

Need to book or cancel a trip and don’t have time to call someone? Located within CTM Portal, our intuitive new travel chatbot, CTM Scout, can help you book your next domestic or trans-Tasman trip or cancel a booking in just a few clicks. Booking through CTM Scout is exclusive to Lightning customers, which knows all your travel preferences and travel policy inside out, ensuring the most relevant, cost-effective, and compliant booking support at maximum speed, so you can get what you need to be done to get on with your day.

See more savings

Whether it’s time, money, or energy, Lightning is engineered to bring savings to your travel program. With intelligent and inclusive content, including low-cost carriers you can stop searching around multiple sites to get the best priced fares. Owning our technology also means no reseller fees passed on to our clients.

Do you struggle with staff going around company policy to book travel that’s non-compliant and over budget? Lightning’s powerful integrated policy settings gently guide travellers on what they can and can’t book, helping to reduce out-of-policy spend without them having to read the travel policy manual. Fare classes or carriers that are outside company policy can still be shown in results if you choose, but are unavailable to be booked so travellers know they are seeing everything to make the best choice.

Keeping track of unused ticket credits before they expire can be tedious, especially for larger companies. Ditch that manually updated spreadsheet and get organised with Lightning’s unused ticket tracker. Lightning helps keep track of your ticket credits for you, and even automatically applies them to your cart so you never waste a ticket or your budget again.

Make greener choices

As more companies track, reduce, or offset their carbon footprint, travellers need to be able to clearly see and understand green options when booking travel. Lightning displays carbon emissions estimates for air, hotel, and car rentals in search results, so your people can instantly see their potential impact and make greener choices.

CTM partners with RDC Aviation to share carbon emissions estimates by cabin class in Lightning based on individual aircraft’s age, engine model, fuel efficiency, seating configuration, and even the airline’s investment in sustainable aviation fuel. Car rental search results can be sorted by carbon footprint, based on an average of 160 km driven per day, or filtered to show electric or hybrid vehicles only. If your company includes offsetting carbon emissions as part of sustainability initiatives, Lightning will show which program you can participate in and even apply your carbon offset cost when confirming your booking.

Keep it simple

We know travel booking doesn’t happen in a silo, and that your online travel booking tool needs to play nice with other travel tools in your program. Lightning smoothly integrates with the CTM Tech suite, including CTM Portal, Mobile, Approvals, and Data Hub reporting, out of the box on Day 1.

Cherie Drummond, Head of Product, AU/NZ shares that “Lightning continues to evolve to support our clients’ travel program goals while making travel booking faster, more cost-effective, and sustainably conscious. Coupled with seamless integrations to our full travel technology suite, Lightning is a great foundation for business travel program success.”

Any good online booking tool would be incomplete without expert support from travel professionals. Lightning comes with proactive, reliable, and real human support for configuration, maintenance, and changes with a dedicated Account Manager and support team invested in your success based in Australia and New Zealand alongside the Lightning product development team.

Get Started

Whether you’ve never used an online travel booking tool or have been using one for decades, it’s time to examine how much it’s helping or hindering your travel program’s success. If the idea of a fast, intuitive, and powerful online travel booking tool intrigues you, it’s time to check out Lightning and see how it can save you time, money and so much more.