Advances in group transport tech

Slough, Berkshire – CoachHire.com launch their B2B & B2B2C group transport management solutions at the 2016 Business Travel Show this February; showcasing a number services available to events bookers, TMCs and MICE organisations to simplify and centralise their group transport requirements. These include their Coach Hire Connect API for TMCs - and a new portal for centralising compliance and booking processes.

The decision comes as CoachHire.com expand their management team to offer increased support to MICE clients in a market that has been historically slow to modernise and is lacking integrated solutions.

With their most successful year yet – carrying 500,000 passengers in 2015 – CoachHire.com Managing Director, Mathew Hassell, says it is high time for technology to bring group and event transport up-to-date, “we have consistently proved our capacity and expertise in carrying out transport for long-running shuttle contracts and events. But there has been no tech solution that stands up to and integrates with the Travel Management systems are already being using for taxi and air travel. Our service bridges that gap.”

CoachHire.com’s move follows successful fundraising at the end of 2015, leading to a £4 million private equity investment over the next three years. The investment has made the development and launch of the Coach Hire Connect API and an improved supplier/compliance portal possible. The company is also developing white-labelled vehicle tracking and booking for MICE organisations running fixed-route services and shuttles.

These new technical developments are designed to simplify customer experience by allowing events clients to manage their coach and minibus bookings from a central portal and use the CoachHire.com global network to rapidly expand their group transport options as well as to keep costs low through effective use of the company’s bidding software.

As well as meeting TMCs’ needs, integrating via the API provides white-labelled booking for clients to expand their customer transport offering without diluting the brand experience. Vehicle tracking will be delivered later this year with many other journey management and compliance improvements all designed to help organisations meet ever stricter rules and regulations on employee transport and safety. By centralising and digitising this process the company hopes to bring group ground transport in line with more advanced markets and develop familiarity and ease-of-use.

The group ground transport sector has been slow to embrace consolidation and Hassell sees this as a turning point: “our market has fallen behind other travel industries because it remains regionally divided. Our technology has been designed to help procurement specialists and events bookers overcome the difficulties arising from this predominately disparate, mom-and-pop sector. By integrating with TMCs, bookers can finally access a complete ground transport solution catering for large groups as easily as single travellers.”