By Bev Fearis, published 8/07/20

American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) has launched a free information source for travel managers, travellers, its own travel counsellors.

Designed to build trust and confidence and encourage the resumption of corporate travel amid the pandemic, the Travel Vitals platform brings together travel information from a number of sources, including government departments, suppliers, and risk intelligence specialist Riskline.

Users can search travel guidelines and advice by destination, airline, airport, hotel chain, train operator and ground transportation provider and can keep track on Covid-19 hot spots. After seeing a brief summary, they can click through to the original source for more detail.

The information is updated daily by a dedicated team at Amex GBT, which began compiling the information back in March.

“We already had a duty of care solution but we realised quickly that in the pandemic every destination had become an unknown risk so we had to shift our idea and come up with an information source for everyone – travellers, travel buyers and travel counsellors,” said Mark McSpadden, GBT’s Vice President of Product Strategy and Experience.

“We believe the information we provide will breed confidence, and that will stimulate demand, and that demand is good for our industry and for the global economy.”

He said GBT is now looking to add more information from validated sources and is also working to fully integrate Travel Vitals with its other products and tools.

“We want this content to be easy for travellers to access while they’re on the move,” said McSpadden.

“To chat with a travel counsellor on the mobile app, use messaging like Apple Business Chat, or receive notifications from the travel manager while on a trip, all helps travellers feel confident and connected.”

Meanwhile, Amex GBT has also launched a spend management platform, Neo1, to help SMEs control cashflow.

The free service integrates purchasing from Amazon Business and GBT’s online travel booking tool to give finance managers greater visibility over all spend categories, such as office supplies, utilities and travel bookings, in one place.