18 Jan 2023
Travel disruption across the UK has been rife for much of 2022, making business travel challenging for many.
Frequent rail strikes, driver supply issues, and rising congestion levels are all factors that have led to an increased demand for reliability when it comes to travel.
The national rail strikes have been on and off since June, with more strikes planned this winter. And all of these strikes have hit business travellers hard.
37% of rail travellers in England are commuters, with an additional 4% of rail tickets sold for business purposes. That means almost half of all rail journeys are made for business purposes.
For those people, rail strikes have disrupted their trips to and from work. While this hasn’t been a huge problem for companies that adapted to hybrid and remote working during the pandemic, for companies in the hospitality, hotel, and retail industries, employees simply need to get to their place of work.
90% of employees who travel for work would rather take the train than drive or fly. But since industrial action began in June, travellers have had to plan ahead to find alternative routes.
No form of travel is always completely free from disruption. And more often than not, you’re not aware that you’ll need to find an alternative form of transport until the last minute — at which time, you risk being late for your meeting or onward connection.
Take corporate ground travel as an example. Compared with flying, ground transport is a more affordable way to travel. But if it goes wrong due to congestion, road closures, or limited availability of drivers, it can cause more noise than a flight delay as ground travel is more frequent.
When ride-hailing services experience a driver shortage, travellers pay the price — they either can’t get a ride or face higher rates.
Some ride-hailing services are solely focussed on corporate ground travel. Business travellers who use these services are often hit the hardest. Having a consumer-facing service alongside our business offering allows us to maintain a supply of drivers during busy periods.
And to give business travellers even more confidence that their car will arrive on time, we’ve introduced the Business Priority category.
We’ve introduced the Business Priority category to give Bolt Business customers the reliability they need.
This category is listed amongst all other categories, such as Comfort, Executive, and Electric but is only visible to Bolt Business customers. The slightly higher fare allows us to pay drivers more and increase the reliability of your journeys.
There’s never been more focus on reliability in transport. It’s become a big discussion point at business travel shows and is now as big of a focus as safety and sustainability.
By providing your team with reliable transport, they can travel for work confidently, leading to increased success for your business.
To discuss how Bolt Business can improve the reliability of your team’s ground travel, get in touch with our team today.
This article was written by Tom Stevenson, Country Manager for the UK and Ireland, Bolt Business.
