Team Travel
Web App / TripActions / 2021
During the pandemic, I worked at TripActions, one of the world's largest Business Travel & Expense Management companies, and nobody thought we would build one of the best products during the worst times. We named it "Team Travel." A new traveling solution for teams that need to collaborate, socialise, and get together after spending two years communicating through Zoom meetings.
Problem & Goal
TripActions is a fantastic tool that enables users to book flights, hotels, and transportation in no more than 5 minutes.
After the pandemic, many of our clients decided to allow their employees to work remotely and use the offices as hubs, where they could meet weekly, monthly, or quarterly to collaborate.
Teams that formed remotely needed to meet in person and bond while exploring a new city or hiking a beautiful mountain.
The goal of this project was to give the travel manager the power to organize and manage travel for their team. The platform would not be about single travelers anymore. It would now enable group travel, and help managers keep track of budgets and activities.
How it went
-
Research
It all started with our customers and their needs post-pandemic. Zoran, the Product Manager, and I started the conversations about the Future of Travel.
The basic questions were:
– What will happen when travel picks up again?
– How will your employees work and collaborate?
– How often will they meet and where?
-
Needs
Most of the customers were working on a similar strategy. Their employees would work remotely, offices were turning into hubs or studios, and the teams would have budgets to travel and meet in the workspaces or around the world to leverage face-to-face collaboration, and improve team bonding.
-
Hackaton
After thorough research, Zoran and I decided to benefit from the company's Hackaton to focus on developing a concept and designs. The initiative came from us, so we needed to find the time to develop it, and pitch it to the company. We spent 48 hours working on the first version of Team Travel, and we were thrilled when we saw the company's reaction, which resulted in us winning the Hackaton.
-
Build a team
The founder was very impressed with the project, mainly because he was having the same conversations about the *Future of Travel*. He knew we were building a product focusing on the needs of our customers. We pitched the idea to the investors, who were also extremely excited.
The next step was to build a team to launch a great product as soon as possible so our customers could start using it, as travel was picking up.
Flow chart
Designs
Inspire me
We created a version to inspire our users with different destinations relevant to the team that needed to travel. We would calculate if people in the group were required to take a flight with a layover or if they needed a visa to enter their destination.
The customer could filter by type of place, price, and weather. Our customers loved the idea of getting inspired using our powerful data sets. It would help teams that needed to bond and get to see each other after many months or even years of remote work.
See it in action
Outcomes
We started working on Team Travel in February 2021, and we released the first version in June. It was inspiring for me and the team to see our product live, mainly because we had the chance to bring one of our ideas to the front of the core business.
The response was even more overwhelming, our customers could not wait to try it, and our investors trusted us to execute our plan entirely. We were able to get a new investment and land our Series E. As of Q4 2022, Team travel is responsible for 2.5% of the company revenue.
It was, without a doubt, one of my proudest moments as a designer!
Check out the release article here.
The team:
Marta Ceffa · Product Designer
Alina Tudose · Frontend Developer
Birkan Pala + Karim Mansour · Backend Developers
Zoran Kovacevic · Product Manager
Other projects
