The right tech to help you save
It’s not until you start working with a travel management company that you realise just how much you can save throughout the booking process…if you have the right technology. Saving on business travel is not just about negotiating rates for your hotel and car hire or getting airfare discounts on your peak routes.
Want to save thousands of pounds with smart technology like a powerful all-in-one travel platform?
Melon was designed to help SMEs book quickly and easily. But it’s more than just a booking tool. It’s an all-in-one travel management software that gives you full visibility of your travel programme. Just looking at Melon’s top features – you’ll see how much potential your business has to save time, money, or both.
Want to see Melon in action? Book a demo
What Melon does for travellers
Melon provides a highly customised experience for individual travellers by remembering their preferences and past bookings. You can easily input their frequent flyer numbers and other memberships in order for the traveller to collect points on their travels.
They'll also have access to Melon's chat function, which means if they're in a jam halfway around the world, they can chat with real people who are there to help - 24/7.
How Melon helps travel bookers
Melon’s Advanced Flight Search makes it easy to shop for different airlines in one place, because sometimes the cheapest fares need to include a bit of this and a bit of that. Melon offers an enhanced airfare shopping functionality to provide cost savings on itineraries where it may be cheaper to purchase a ticket from a different airline for each leg of the traveller’s journey (rather than from one single airline). This can come in especially handy on some wild and wonderful multi-stop itineraries.
Melon makes it easy to shop air, hotel, and car hire with all of our rates in one place. From the cheapest restricted rates with big discounts to fully flexible rates, it's your choice! Melon offers a more advanced shopping functionality by pulling from Melon Exclusive Rates and other negotiated contracts with over 50,000+ hotels. You'll be able to mix & match carriers which offers more options for schedules that fit your needs! On top of that, you benefit from our global buying power, which means greater access to flexibility, loyalty, and included perks!
This eliminates the lengthy shopping process, navigating multiple tabs, and putting together of complex itineraries for travellers. Melon’s functionality totally busts this pain point and saves you time! And we all know time = ££.
How Melon benefits businesses
Melon drives policy compliance by flagging any booking choice that’s non-compliant. It also helps manage air travel credits, which means your business is less likely to lose money on expired tickets.
Admins have the ability to see the company’s credits easily on their admin screen. When you’d like to apply a credit to a booking, get in touch with your travel consultant, who will advise you on the best route forward, the value of the credit, the rules of the credit, etc.
Melon also generates a recommended flight or hotel spend (“Recommended Spend”) based on live prices and availability. Melon's new AI feature can be adjusted and set for varying roles, seniority or department, allowing you to balance savings against convenience, all in alignment with your company's travel policies.
Why self-booking with Melon is important
If something works, you’ll use it, right? That’s why we made Melon totally user-friendly. The more bookings your business makes with Melon, the more you save on booking fees. Customers can book domestic or international flights through Melon, with the booking flow easy to follow, fast and policy driven.
Have the flexibility you need with a simplified approval process. Opt to set up group approvers or profile approvers with Melon. And, as an alternative to an approval flow, you have the option to have Manager notification only. What’s the difference?
Group approvers and profile approvers can approve or decline travel requests made by users in their group. Profile approval allows you to assign approvers to individuals by profile (e.g. their line manager).
Manager notifications are based on recommended spend applied to air/hotel, in addition to the Visual guilt option. These give you the option to cancel a trip that is above the recommend spend set up in your business policies.
The upshot of all this? Travel tech is an essential enabler for businesses to save on travel. From the booking and buying process to reporting and supplier negotiations, the opportunities to save are everywhere.