Nothing like being in the right place at the right time, as one corporate travel startup is finding out.
Travel and expense platform TravelBank is currently benefiting from having several clients in a sector that’s managed to boom during the pandemic: food delivery.
It counts DoorDash, Caviar and Grubhub as customers, which have all been expanding as millions of people embrace local restaurant takeaways from the relative comfort (and safety) of their own home — with employers picking up the tab in many cases.
The transition to working from home proved to be the most significant impact as it led to a “democratization of expenses”, according to Chung. Overnight, internet access, office equipment, food deliveries and other perks became the only things employees were expensing.
TravelBank reacted by developing a tool to help finance teams create new expense policies and communicate them to employees, and launched a marketplace where purchases could be made. “Clients asked us to find providers that we should look at, especially if there are discounts and offers, for their employees. So we started to introduce a lot of new categories including everything from food delivery options to SoulCycle, and apps like Calm and Headspace. It’s the new travel … I hope it’s not in the long term,” he added.
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