You know you’re doing something right when a business already based in another Oxford Innovation Space managed centre chooses to expand by opening a second office but this time at Crawley Innovation Centre. Meet Aeris Business Travel, who are one of the UK’s leading independent corporate travel companies. Running for over 50 years, they provide experienced travel professionals who know their travellers, understand their business and take personal responsibility for making sure business trips run smoothly.
We sat down with Mark Colley, owner and managing director, to ask a few questions about how they are finding life at Crawley Innovation Centre and what their plans are for the future.
Q. What made you decide to open a second office and base yourself at Crawley Innovation Centre? We recently acquired another corporate travel company who were based a little further out from Crawley and were keen to relocate them to what’s considered one of the national hubs for travel, being so close to Gatwick Airport. It also puts us closer to many of our customers in the aerospace and transport sectors, who are also based near Gatwick. And we know we’re in good company here too, close to partner suppliers like Virgin Atlantic and easyJet.
Q. Business travel and the travel industry have changed so much over the last decade; what trends are you now seeing? Technology has evolved enormously, not least with the advent of AI. We recently launched AerisOne, our leading-edge customer-facing tech hub, which solved a problem business travel has faced for years – the fragmentation of tech solutions. Elsewhere in the industry, human service has been stripped back in favour of technology and that’s set to continue. At Aeris, we’ve gone the other way and our consultants all have 20+ years’ experience and our customers are never more than a short call away from them.
Q. What are your future ambitions for Aeris Business Travel? AerisOne currently brings together seven tech solutions in one place and our roadmap will take that to ten over the next 12 months. But we see our real growth coming from bucking the trend and staying steadfast in providing genuine, expert human service alongside the technology.
If you would like to join Aeris Business Travel and run your business from Crawley Innovation Centre then why not book a tour.