Wondering where "gamification" will show up in your travel program? Have a look at
Serko's self-booking tool for a peek at the future.
Darrin Grafton, Serko's CEO, designed his booking tool's behavior reward module to be customized by each corporate client. Some clients may, for example, choose to give more points for early booking, while others may prioritize the booking of a preferred hotel.
Elsewhere in the tool it provides the traveler with his/her position on a leaderboard, something like "You are ranked 25th out of 345 travelers based on your reward points achieved to date."
It seems such a logical way to help drive compliance to the desired travel policies, at very little cost in terms of clutter on the booking page. I was a fan of this idea before, and am more so now, after seeing it implemented by Serko.
Darrin is introducing this innovation, and others the Serko team has made to this popular Austral-Asia corporate booking tool, at a major travel show in the next few weeks. It will be fascinating to hear what his corporate customers have to say about this. Darrin, please do keep us posted here.
For now, I'll just say "Game on!"
Scott Gillespie is the author of Gillespie's Guide to Travel + Procurement. These thoughts are excerpted with permission from his blog.