We at IAAP have had the privilege of working with some outstanding vendors over the years, and TRAVO is no different. The whole office is buzzing about how cool their service is. It’s so much more than some of the other travel-planning websites in that it really is a one-stop shop for all your travel planning needs. And, what’s even better, it’s designed explicitly for admins. Tae Lee, CEO of TRAVO explains just what they’re hoping to provide with TRAVO, and how it can impact your job.

Tae Lee:
Administrative professionals are the Olympians of the office with gold medals in every major event: The meeting scheduling dash, the off-site relay, and, toughest of all, the travel planning marathon. Every time your traveler is heading out of town, you slip into your traveler’s shoes and create an end-to-end itinerary for them. However, administrative professionals are forced to run a marathon with outdated equipment slowing them down. Rather than using a range of tools that include sticky notes and Excel spreadsheets, TRAVO’s goal is to boil down your arsenal of travel tools to one single booking and planning platform. Our inspiration and drive for this goal has stemmed directly from conversations from admins just like yourself!

We have spent the past year talking with thousands of admins all over the world to learn more about your unique travel planning pain points. Through these conversations, we have continued to develop and improve TRAVO. And now, we are excited to announce to IAAP members that we have launched our new booking platform that will help solve problems like: inefficient communications, organizing traveler information, and expensive booking fees. Features like living itineraries, trip approval emails, and traveler profiles will help all administrative professionals plan travel more efficiently and help you get to that finish line faster and easier!

Inefficient Communications

Every itinerary you make through TRAVO is flexible and can be changed as often as your manager’s plans and meetings change. After you create an itinerary, share it with your traveler. Your traveler can instantly view all their flight, lodging, and ground options and make edits as they see fit. Once the trip is ready to book, all you have to do is open the search and all the changes will appear on your page. Gone are the days of infinitely long email threads discussing optimal flight times and brands. Use TRAVO’s living itineraries to collaborate with your traveler and save both of you time and headaches.

Then, once you book flights, hotels, and rental cars, all the confirmation numbers are automatically added to your traveler’s itinerary and will be included in any exported Word Document or Outlook Calendar. You no long need to track each confirmation number and receipt in an Excel Document. TRAVO will format and save all of this information for you. Best of all, TRAVO itineraries continue to be flexible even after you book allowing you to add additional meetings, flights, and accommodations.

Organizing Traveler Information

Many administrative professionals are responsible for organizing travel for an entire team. Between finding meetings that fit their schedule and preferences, planning travel for one person is hard enough. Now add even one more traveler and the task feels impossible! With TRAVO, simply create a profile for each of your travelers and you’ll never have to refer back to your sticky notes or Google Docs ever again! Traveler profiles include preferred airlines, loyalty programs, and passport information.

After creating profiles for travelers, all of their information will automatically be imported to the checkout page. Booking complete itineraries can be accomplished with a single click of a button.

Expensive Booking Fees

The best part of TRAVO is that it’s 100 percent free! This means no booking fees, no subscription fees, and no commitments. Administrative professionals are often limited by corporate budgets and are therefore forced to use tools that don’t necessarily fit their needs. TRAVO is a completely free booking platform designed specifically for administrative professionals who plan travel for others.

We are humbled and thrilled by the incredible demand we’ve seen for TRAVO. We are going to be adding admins off of the waitlist as fast as we can, so sign up as soon as possible! We are also partnering with IAAP to offer all of their members exclusive priority access and service benefits to use TRAVO for your travel planning and booking needs. All IAAP members will be assigned a personal client success manager who will walk through your first bookings with you and provide you with one-on-one training sessions.

We can’t wait to get everyone trying TRAVO and to help you all start booking travel smarter, faster, and easier!

IAAP has even partnered with TRAVO to make sure you make it to IAAP Summit 2017 as effortlessly as possible. It’s a great way to test drive the system and book your spot at the administrative profession’s best conference.

Tae Lee is the CEO and founder of the administrative assistant’s trip planning tool TRAVO. Prior to founding TRAVO, Tae served as executive vice president of Operations and Technology at the leading video advertising technology firm, ZEFR