Why switch to Lightning for your online travel booking tool?

Every modern travel programme 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 even 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.

Most online booking tools will limit you to basic flights, hotels, and car hire, but Lightning goes much further. You can book UK and European domestic trains, Eurostar, and taxis all from one fast, intuitive booking platform that syncs directly with your company policy. We’ve even added the ability to reserve airport lounge access and parking so you know your VIPs will enjoy the smoothest business travel experience from door to door.

See more savings

Whether it’s time, money, or energy, Lightning is engineered to bring savings to your travel programme from a huge range of travel content. With intelligent and inclusive choices, 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 for our clients, since we aren’t reselling other technology that can involve reseller fees by some agencies and technology providers.

Lightning’s not just a standalone product thanks to CTM’s integrated technology model though. CTM’s direct integration to our Fare Forecaster tool lets you search to identify cheaper alternatives to fly within 7 days of your initial dates, so flexibility can pay off.

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, including timely messages in the booking flow to remind them what’s appropriate. 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.

Make greener choices

Lightning was the first product to be awarded BTN Europe’s Sustainability award for Corporate Booking Platform in May 2023. 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 flights, hotels, trains, and car hire in search results, so your people can instantly see their potential impact and make greener choices when deciding which option to take.

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 100 miles driven per day, or filtered to show electric or hybrid vehicles only.

The emission totals feed directly into our Carbon Budget feature which can be displayed both in Lightning and in CTM Portal for travel and sustainability admins to view. In Lightning the Carbon Budget is placed above search results, serving as a gentle reminder for travellers to be carbon-conscious. We make it even easier to find the most sustainable choices with CTM Green Choice labels, which highlight the lowest emissions options and show the difference between them and the average for that route.

It pays to take the train

Lightning’s powerful capabilities in flight and hotel search are matched by your choices for UK and European train travel. For applicable routes where it’s logical for a customer to travel by train, Lightning automatically runs a simultaneous search and shows the cost and carbon emissions savings that users can switch to in one click.

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 compare carbon emissions, to give travellers exactly what they need to make the best choice.

Lightning also reduces repetitive tasks by letting Travel Arrangers book up to eight travellers in one transaction. With baggage add-ons and loyalty status recognition at the 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. Lightning’s new in-app feed shares recent release updates and acts as a direct feedback channel for specific features.

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 programme. Lightning smoothly integrates with the CTM Tech suite, including CTM Portal, Mobile, Approvals, and Data Hub reporting, out of the box on Day 1.

Brian Sheerin, Chief Technology Officer, EMEA shares that “Lightning continues to evolve to support our clients’ travel programme 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 programme 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 Online Support team invested in your success based in the UK with Lightning’s 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 programme’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.