You travel a lot for work and you always book your own trips, right? That must be time consuming.

Yes.

And in your company you are using Slack.

Yes.

Okay, would you use a slack channel that connects you to a digital travel assistant 24/7?
You can pre-set favorites (e.g., airfares, seats, hotels, etc.) and payment details in your profile. In the slack channel, you simply and informally write your booking requirements such as date, time and destinations and then you receive an option, which you accept or reject with one click. Or you can ask for an alternative option.

Umm..

As a result, you do not have to visit the various websites of Lufthansa or the individual hotels and everything is booked automatically for you.
This saves you time and does not cost much more.

Sounds good.

How much would you be willing to pay for this?

In a travel agency you do not pay anything extra for things like this, right?

But the service would be available to you 24 hours a day. This is not the case with a travel agency, because you have to take account of the opening hours and probably you have to formulate more formal requests.

That's true. So if it would take care of the whole travel booking topic including proper billing, it would be worth a lot to me.

Great, then my idea fits perfectly for you.

No question, that's a good idea.

I will keep working on it. May I meet you again when I'm ready to integrate the slack channel for the digital travel assistant and would you then test it?

Yeah, I would like to try that.

How do you handle the travel bookings?

Well, everyone does that themselves - as needed.

How often do you book a hotel or flight online?

Actually almost every week.

And how is that for you?

I got used to it, the booking is actually relatively fast. What really annoys me is collecting the receipts.

What exactly annoys you?

For flights, it is kind of ok since the passenger receipt which you get directly by email is sufficient. But with hotel accommodations you have to always be careful to ask for the bill and take it with you. It's frustrating.

Could you tell me an example of how this works? Where have you been, for example, last week?

Last week I was in Switzerland and stayed in a hotel chain.

Why did you choose the hotel?

I always choose hotels that are close to the customer and that can be booked and paid online via the hotel website. These are usually hotel chains.

How did you book the room?

I used the booking form on the hotel website and entered everything - including the correct billing address. When I checked in there, I had to fill in all all data on paper again. It's frustrating.

Why is this annoying?

First, I had already filled everything online and secondly, I've been to this hotel for x times. I expect that the data will be automatically taken over so I do not have to provide it every time.

And what happened after that?

Well, same story happened at check-out. First I waited forever until it's my turn and then there was a mistake in the billing address, which had to be corrected again. And then I have to carry the bill with me and remember to put it down properly in the office.