Over the last five years technology has been busy transforming the one spend category that was ripe for change – ground transportation. What was once manual and opaque is increasingly automated and data-rich from AI-driven analytics.

Long considered the “last mile” and consigned as low priority behind high-value air travel and hotel bookings, it is the last bastion of unmanaged travel.

Disruptors and mainstream suppliers are improving the way it is managed with technology platforms, booking portals and apps to allow corporates to book, pre-book, embed policy, track, report on costs and CO2, provide spend visibility and satisfy duty of care. These advances make managing ground transportation comparable to air and hotels.

“These mobile apps make it easy to book, bring visibility so we can drive behaviour change and bring more savings,” says Karen Hutchings, CEO and founder of consultants Cobb & Hutch.

“What these companies are doing is really smart. It’s a quick win for travel managers.”

To date, this spend has been akin to the Wild West, with unclear or no policies at all, giving travellers the freedom to book whatever chauffeur, taxi, car rental, bike or scooter they want. Leakage has been legion – one statistic points to 70% of ground transportation bookings being out of policy – while safety has been another issue.

“For corporates who get this right: success will look like a smooth end-to-end travel ecosystem where the airport transfer is as seamless, visible, manageable and compliant as the flight or hotel; where spend is visible, policy is enforced, travellers are happy; where ground transport is an enabler not a headache,” says Lorenzo Bugliari, Director, Taxiworld/JUMP, the app for black cabs.

Merging lanes

Aside from technology, change has come from consolidation in this fragmented marketplace, especially by the global ride-hailing brands. Lyft purchased Freenow and TBR Global Chauffeuring, Addison Lee acquired Tristar, Bolt acquired a Danish operator and Chabé, a major French player, bought a UK fleet to expand its reach. Both Bolt and Uber have launched business arms: Bolt Business and Uber for Business. Uber dominates the ride hail sector in most countries and is strongly challenged by Bolt, while Blacklane is the major player in chauffeuring.

“The corporate ground transport market is undergoing a seismic shift — and a few major players are setting the pace,” reckons Craig Chambers, Group CEO at TBR, one of Lyft’s acquired companies.

“It’s promising to see a once-fragmented world consolidating into smart, efficient and seamless platforms.”

“The corporate ground transport market is undergoing a seismic shift — and a few major players are setting the pace”

Fewer suppliers should translate to better integrations, a simpler vendor management process, less admin and better service and a single, unified method for invoicing. Rich content will mean that favourite suppliers – and this is a very personalised spend area with high expectations – will be integrated into a seamless ecosystem.

“They will need fewer contracts as they can have a framework agreement that covers more countries and regions making the overall procurement process easier,” says Felix Brand, Chief Strategy Officer at Freenow by Lyft.
“In Europe, where regulation and language diversity make operations complex, consolidation helps platforms achieve efficiency and consistency,” says Dr Vojkan Tasic, CEO at Limos4, the premium chauffeured ground transportation network.

“We’re also seeing alliances between chauffeur networks, TMCs, and technology providers to create more integrated ecosystems, essentially uniting booking, tracking, invoicing and reporting in one place.”

But Dr Tasic warns that it must be smart consolidation, as in, “one network, one data ecosystem, and one service philosophy, without sacrificing the quality and care that make the chauffeur experience unique”.

Freenow by Lyft, for example, offers taxis, e-bikes, e-scooters, e-mopeds and car sharing across one platform, giving corporates a single, compliant solution across 180 European cities and, since July’s acquisition, leveraged across Lyft’s four continents and nearly 1,000 cities. It also has the capability to embed travel policies, giving travellers access to specific fleet types to help drive compliance.

Similarly, the joining up of TBR and Lyft will bring benefit to corporates in the shape of a “360-degree ground transportation solution, from everyday black cars to full-service chauffeur experiences”, says Brand, backed by Lyft’s technology across 3,000 cities across six continents.

Limos4 provides real-time visibility, strict partner auditing, 24/7 proactive operations management, alerts for delays or flight changes, full compliance tracking, carbon-footprint data and integrated reporting for global clients form its own proprietary technology platform.

Building bridges

Attempting to professionalise the sector is global ground transport management platform Mobility IQ, from The Miles Consultancy, which integrates all favourite suppliers into a seamless ecosystem together with its OBT.

“It’s an enterprise-grade platform and we are deliberately focussed on large enterprise clients for now,” says Stuart Donnelly, President Mobility.
“We’re integrating all the verticals so corporates can have on-demand rail and car rental and policy and CO2 and duty of care and offer a bridge over all of them.”

“It’s the black hole of travel spend, where travel managers focus on air spend and TMC spend”

He believes TMCs and OBTS are not interested in this sector due to its characteristically high volume and low value and reckons they are missing a trick. Substantial savings are possible now that there are sophisticated solutions in the marketplace to show fastest, greenest and cheapest options, he says.

Donnelly cites a £105 cost discrepancy between the lowest and highest cost option of a provider during the month of June, and a similar price differential between one standard car category between Addison Lee, Bolt and Uber.

“We’re not talking about pocket change,” says Donnelly. “It’s the black hole of travel spend, where travel managers focus on air spend and TMC spend.”

Some estimates place ground transport at 10% of total travel spend, but it could be even higher.

“It’s the largest unprocured category they have,” says Daniel Price, CEO of Jyrney.

Creating a baseline and policy, mandating suppliers and changing traveller behaviour are the first steps to best practice.

“Some estimates place ground transport at 10% of total travel spend, but it could be even higher”

When travellers only need to use one platform rather than using multiple ones, Price believes this will naturally shift behaviour to increase traction and adoption.

For example, Jyrney aggregates everything from ride hail to hiring a limo or a whole day hire, including all local and global taxis firms, and provides that content in a single API bookable by a TMC. “This is the future – seamless and touch-free. We can connect a small taxi firm on the outskirts of Manchester to a global client,” says Price.

Jyrney works with 15 TMCs currently and earlier this year its API was integrated into Inntel’s app, giving travellers access to ride-hail from Bolt alongside taxi and chauffeur cars. This has driven a 500% increase in bookings, underlining the customer demand shift towards fully integrated mobility.

Meanwhile, Blacklane can customise its booking portal to fit the right customer profile. “It can be nuanced to embrace a two-tier policy or an elevated service when an employee travels, say, in personal time,” says James Dow, General Manager UK & Ireland. Insights include booking behaviour, number of users, CO2 emissions, type of vehicles, cost savings and more.

Blacklane recently released a new booker portal with a raft of new functionality. Features include the ability to save frequent guests, improved single sign-on, adding details such as vehicle licence plate, being able to book for someone else and so on. It is available across distribution channels such as Concur, Groundspan and Navan.

Price at Jyrney reckons ground transportation will become an incredibly more interesting space, particularly in a new world where ‘robot taxis’ take over responsibility for moving clients around cities. Conservative estimates predict that up to one million autonomous taxi vehicles could be on the roads globally by 2035, in a market worth $100bn. “It’s about to be a humungous part of how we move around, so travel managers have got to get their arms around it,” he says.