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Enterprise mobility platform HQ took home the BTN
Group’s 2023 Innovator of the Year Award at the 10th annual Innovate
conference held in New York yesterday.
“Has anyone noticed how high rates have gotten with
rideshare post pandemic? This is an area of corporate travel management that
really needs to be managed,” lead judge Norm Rose told the 400-strong Innovate
audience as he announced the 2023 Innovator of the Year award winner. “I think in
the initial iteration we looked was ‘I’ll cut a deal with Lyft’ or ‘I’ll cut a
deal with Uber.’ What HQ brings to the party is true travel management,
bringing everything together in one place and we congratulation them on their
win.”
HQ’s end-to-end enterprise platform offers a global
platform with connectivity to local ground transportation suppliers with a
layer that integrates corporate preferred suppliers and wraps corporate policy,
reporting and visibility around it, plus a consistent booking platform for users
globally—though it will also collect data from bookings made directly on participating
supplier sites. The company vets its transportation suppliers for duty of care
and brings negotiated rates to the table as either a primary savings opportunity
or to supplement the client’s own preferred supplier rates.
What HQ brings to the party is true travel management, bringing everything together in one place and we congratulation them on their win.”
Innovate 2023 Lead Judge, Travel Tech Consulting president Norm Rose
Chief revenue officer Charity Rumery presented for HQ,
satisfying the judges’ questions with quick and thorough responses about the technology platform itself, interoperability with supplier direct bookings, duty of care, global coverage, policy points and reporting.
“This is very incredible and very humbling,” said Rumery,
accepting the award trophy. “It takes guts to come up here. I’ve presented in a
lot of places, and this is one of the finer, pointed places to present. I am so
honored for our organization.”
Innovate judges for 2023 included Amazon Travel and Events
manager of hotel programs strategy Jeff Hillenmayer, Travel Tech Consulting
president Norm Rose, Acquis corporate travel practice lead Hansini Sharma, and 2022
Innovate winner Troop CEO and founder Dennis Vilovic.
The People’s Choice
The BTN Group Innovate conference also gives the
audience a voice in choosing a winner. This year, the audience voted for a
collaboration between two early Innovator of the Year winners: Tripbam, which
won the first Innovator of the Year award in 2014, and Emburse Go, formerly known
as Roadmap, which won its Innovator of the Year award in 2015.
The provisionally named Tripbam Go aims to combine the
savings potential driven by Tripbam’s hotel re-shopping and re-booking capabilities
with the engagement strength of the Emburse Go mobile app, sending directly to
the traveler through the mobile app the opportunity to “get a better
deal” on their lodging, whether that is a better deal on price only or also a
better room, closer to their meeting location, or a number of other possible
benefits. By presenting the opportunity directly through the mobile app, pilot
testing of the collaboration has shown five times the uptake from travelers,
compared to the Tripbam offer delivered through email. That was a win for the audience.
Judges named Navan, presenting its artificial intelligence-driven Ava technology, and Tripkicks, presenting its contextual booking tool overlays, as honorable
mentions. Additional participants in the 2023 Innovation Faceoff included AmTrav,
ATG, Bizly, BTP Automation, Cerebri AI, HRS, Hubli, Snowfall, Mobility iQ.
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