In collaboration with the University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) routeRANK developed commuteRANK, an additional interface to our multimodal routing engine that allows to analyze large numbers of commuter trips in an automated manner. It accurately calculates all relevant door-to-door route options, by considering all means of transport such as rail, public transport, P+Rail and P+Ride, car pooling, private car, walking and biking and their many combinations. Based on user selected parameters, this is then used for the objective attribution of limited parking spaces, for the identification of which commuter trips would actually benefit from a financial contribution to an e-bike or a public transport pass or for the simulation and analysis of strategic decisions.
In managed business travel, our Total Trip Planning now supports both the classical online workflow where the user books in their Online Booking Tool and the classical offline workflow where the agent books in their GDS as well as the mixed workflow where the user decides on their preferred door-to-door option and then triggers a structured electronic request to the agent for booking. Integrations with several additional OBT’s, GDS’s and related systems such as profile and expense management are now available and more will follow before the end of the year. Please contact us directly for more information on what we can provide in your specific context.
Marking the fifth anniversary, the Widget for the Paléo Festival was again updated with the special public transport this summer and reached a new usage peak. With its 230’000 visitors in 2014, Paléo is one of the major open-air music festivals in mainland Europe. Similar to our whitelabler offering, the Widget helps festival-goers to find their best door-to-door way to get to the event by also considering the environmental impact.
New elements and modes of transport now include P+Rail and P+Ride as well as car sharing and car pooling. As always, they are fully and multimodally integrated into our route planning and principally available for all versions of routeRANK. This allows finding more relevant options on the regional end of longer trips as well as more relevant routes for shorter trips, in particular to and from areas that are less well connected by public transport. For example, public transport & car sharing combinations can now be found across multiple relevant Mobility car sharing locations and car & public transport combinations can now be found across multiple relevant P+Rail parkings. Please contact us directly for more information.
Further improving user experience and facilitating booking of accomodation, routeRANK added content from HotelsCombined, a leading hotel price comparison website. Look out for their link above the routeRANK results in some of the relevant versions, such as the limited public version or the TCS whitelabel; preferred hotel partners in custom configured versions remain with their relevant selected content, of course.
We are proud that routeRANK’s first patent has been granted in the US. It concerns our personalized real-time location-based travel management method for multimodal travel. Watch this space as more are in the pipeline.
At ACTE Stuttgart founder and Chairman Jochen Mundinger participated in Innovations in the travel industry session, at PhoCusWright Europe Dublin in the Executive Roundtable Multi-modal – The Methods to Mayhem. More recently, he also spoke at the VDR Regionalkonferenz Ost in Berlin.
Concerning mobility more generally, routeRANK presented its solutions for travelers, visitors and commuters at the Mobilitäts-Salon in St. Gallen, bringing together 120 experts for an exchange on the latest in mobility management and and sustainable development. For meeting us at future events, also keep an eye on our social media channels.
Moreover, routeRANK became a member of both NiMo and Mobilservice. The Network Intelligent Mobility promotes collaboration between the many different actors in the field of fleet and travel with the goal of lowering costs and CO2 emissions while increasing the attractiveness for employees. Community Mobilservice promotes networking and knowledge transfer among actors and professionals in the field of sustainable mobility.
American Express Global Business Travel newsletter ON-TRAVEL as well as L’Echo-Touristique published articles about our Total Trip Planning in managed business travel as did Efficience in travel more generally.
The role of travel in the wider field of corporate mobility management was addressed by Smart Mobility Management and Touring Club Switzerland (TCS) magazine Touring as well as the City of Zürich published and article and documentation respectively on routeRANK’s complete mobility offering.
A brief review of our 8 years from an environmental perspective can be found in Beobachter Natur and the novel optimization tool for freight shipments in a success story of the Swiss Innovation Promotion Agency CTI’s annual report. For more coverage and further information, please check our press page.