Voyage Manager announces an anonymous travel tracker to meet the privacy concerns travellers may have.
Today at Voyage Manager we have just started work on a new product, a new travel tracker that will address the concerns many travellers have about privacy. We’re creating an anonymous travel tracker!
Tracking travellers is becoming more and more common, as the recent article by Buying Business Travel shows. Companies large and small are investing increasing amounts of money into travel management, and there is a long list of reasons why they should. Companies have a legal duty of care to look after their employees while they are travelling on company business, especially in parts of the world where kidnapping is a real issue. It doesn’t stop there though. Tracking all travel allows a company to monitor and enforce policies, preventing too many employees from being on the same flight, as well as enabling the company to negotiate bulk discounts on tickets and travel insurance. In short, big companies do better when they know where their employees are.
Privacy is however a major concern. The Bundesdatenschutzgesetz is a German privacy law that shows just how seriously the German’s take their privacy. In Germany this is a very sore issue for historical reasons.
It is for these reasons that we’ve decided to start building an anonymous travel tracker. Our new project will track the exact location of every traveller within a company, but will do so without knowing who they are, who they work for, or where they are going.
We will use a variety of data gathering techniques to do this. We have set up a reporting system that for each major transit point in the world (airports, train stations, docks etc.), will inform us that an unknown number of travellers have passed though, while keeping it secret, even from us, the location that is reporting this information.
Our mobile phone app will report back, taking care to hide any identifiable details (such as your phone number or EMEI number) that it you are safe, while withholding your GPS coordinates. We’ve even taken advantage of this feature to reduce the power consumption of our mobile apps.
And the final part of the puzzle is our customised tracking devices. Small electronics devices designed for travellers to carry with them on their travels which routinely report back to us the message that “someone was somewhere”. These devices are so effective that they even work when the traveller leaves them at home, allowing the traveller’s employer to save money on baggage costs.
“This is a really freaking awesome idea!” says Voyage Manager CEO, John Scott. “For a long time there has been a tension between the tracking needs of our customers, and the privacy needs of their employees. So I ordered the development on our latest flagship project. The ATT or Anonymous Travel Tracker!"
Development on this project is just getting started, so make sure you get in touch with us if you want more details, or to find out more as we progress with development.
